Straken

Thirty–One

The day was drenched in sunlight, and from high in the air where she rode aboard the Druid airship Bremen, Grianne Ohmsford could see the countryside for fifty miles in all directions. Huge, cottony clouds floated against the western horizon far out on the flats of the Streleheim, distant and remote, a soft promise of good weather. The airship sailed north on the first day of its expedition, and the woman who had once been Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order was at peace.

She had known for a long time what she would do, she supposed. She had known from before she had come back through the Forbidding what must happen. The order would never heal while she was Ard Rhys, no matter how much she wanted to make it well, no matter how hard she tried to mend its wounds. The past is always with us, and more so with her than with most. She had accepted that she would never be free of that past.

She could chart the important phases of her life: as a child of six hiding in the cellar of her home with her baby brother while her parents were slaughtered in the rooms above, as a young girl subverted by the Morgawr into believing that the Druid Walker Boh had been responsible, as the Ilse Witch working to destroy Walker until a chance meeting with the brother she had thought dead revealed the truth, and as Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order struggling to find a way to gain acceptance as a force for good within the Four Lands.

She could see the path her life had taken and comprehend the reasons for all that she had done. But she could never explain it satisfactorily to anyone else. She could try, but most would dismiss her words as clever attempts at self–justification or worse.

She understood the truth of things. Some would always see her as the Ilse Witch, and would worry that beneath the surface of the image she projected, a monster lurked. That would never change, the roots of mistrust had grown too deep. Traunt Rowan had been right about that. Had he been more patient and less foolish, he would have lived to see her admit it.

She glanced back at the pilot box, where one of Kermadec’s Rock Trolls stood at the helm. Kermadec himself was seated on a box below the side wall, deep in conversation with Penderrin. She wondered what they were talking about. Even in the short time since the big Troll’s recovery from the battle in the north tower, the two had grown close. After returning the Moric to the Forbidding, the boy had come back to Paranor with his parents and had remained to help her restore some semblance of order to the Druid’s Keep. His parents had stayed, too, for a little while. But they had grown uncomfortable, as they always did with Paranor, and—seeing that she had matters well enough in hand, and missing their home and their old life—they had decided to go home to Patch Run.

But Pen had stayed on, his friendships with Kermadec, Tagwen, and Khyber Elessedil influencing his decision at least in part. All were aware of the transition Grianne was working, all were anxious to help her see it through. Pen could do no less, he told his parents. Bek understood, Rue accepted. They made him promise he would not stay past the end of the month. They wished Grianne and the others well, said good–bye, and flew SwiftSure home. Grianne never told them all of what she intended, although she would have liked to tell Bek. But it was best if she didn’t, she told herself. It would be easier on them if they didn’t know.

She had dissolved the order and dismissed those still in her service. As Ard Rhys, she had the power to do this, and there was no one who would question her now. She gave Paranor into the keeping of Khyber, Bellizen, and Trefen Morys. When the time was right and when they had found a way to do so, they would re–form the order. A handful of others who had remained loyal were invited to stay, as well. But she charged the three she trusted most with spearheading the task of carrying on, the ones she believed would work the hardest. All three had asked her to reconsider. All had pleaded inexperience and limited skills. They were not equal to the task. Others could do better.

But there were no others she could rely on, and there were covenants to monitor, a part of the agreement that she had forged with the Federation and the Free–born. Her young successors would struggle at first, but they would learn from their mistakes and they would grow from their experiences. They would survive, protected as they were by Paranor and their magic, by the mystique of the Druids, and by their own perseverance and determination. She had thought this through carefully after talking with each. It was the right choice.

In the end, persuaded that she would not accept their refusals, they had acquiesced. They would select those men and women who would make up the next generation of Druids at Paranor. Perhaps, in time, the governments and peoples of the Four Lands would come to accept them as a good and necessary force for the furtherance of peace and cooperation among the Races. Certainly, they would have a better chance of achieving that goal than Grianne did.

Just then the Elves and the Federation were in the difficult process of putting themselves back together. Arling Elessedil would serve as Queen regent until her eldest daughter grew to adulthood and assumed the throne. There was a rumor she would remarry and seek to put a son on the throne instead, that she would never permit her daughters to follow in the footsteps of their father and grandfather. She was a strong–willed, at times intractable woman, and she did not look back fondly on her marriage to Kellen Elessedil. With the war on the Prekkendorran ended, she was seeking ways to assure that madness of the sort he had displayed as King would never happen again. She would never achieve that goal, of course. Perhaps she knew that. But it did not stop her from trying.

Battered and disheartened by their defeat on the Prekkendorran, the Federation had withdrawn its armies, ceding to Callahorn and its people the lands to which it had laid claim during the war. After more than thirty years, the Southlanders had lost their taste for fighting a war that had netted them nothing. Sen Dunsidan was dead, and a new Prime Minister ruled the Coalition Council—a man who did not favor expansion as a goal and war as a means to an end. His people appeared to agree. There were those on both sides who believed that the war should be fought to the bitter end, those who would never accept any resolution short of victory on the battlefield, but they represented a small minority. A peace accord was swiftly brokered.

The threat presented by the deadly fire launcher was blunted, at least for the time being. As a condition to the peace she had brokered between the Federation and the Free–born, Grianne had won a single concession: There would be no further use of diapson crystals in the making of weapons. Diapson crystals would be used to power airships, and that would be all. The last fire launcher had been destroyed. The man who had invented it had disappeared and was believed dead, and his plans for building other weapons had been lost in a fire along with his models and designs. She had made certain of those things. She had assured herself that the matter was settled.

Her price for winning the agreement and assistance of all parties in enforcing covenants regarding the future use of diapson crystals was her promise to relinquish her place as head of the Druid order. Those who sought that did not know she had already made the decision to step down. It did not hurt to let them believe they had been responsible for persuading her. They were as frightened of her as they were of any weapon, and the bargain was easily struck.

She could not know if the bargain would be kept, but for the moment, at least, there was a fresh outlook in the governing bodies of the Races and a chance that common sense might prevail. Her successors would do their best to see that it did. Tagwen would serve as their adviser. Kermadec, who had re–formed the Druid Guard from among his own people, would see that they were protected. It was as much as anyone could hope for. It was the best she could do.

« Aunt Grianne?»

Penderrin stood at her elbow. She gave him a quick smile, her reflections and musings scattering like dust motes. «It’s a beautiful day, Pen. Perhaps that is a good omen.»

He smiled back guardedly. «Do you really think you can do something to help?» he asked. «Do you think there is a chance you can get her back?»

« I think maybe there is. Don’t you?»

He bit his lip. «I think that if anyone can do it, you can.»

« That is high praise, coming from a boy who found his way into the Forbidding and back again.» She paused. «Perhaps when we get there, you will discover that you don’t really need me after all, that you can do this by yourself.»

She saw the unsettled look that crossed his face. «No,” he said. «I’ve seen what’s down there, how she’s bound by the tree roots with the others. I don’t think I would be strong enough to free her on my own.»

They were flying to Stridegate and the island of the tanequil, where they would attempt to reclaim Cinnaminson. She thought that perhaps she had made the decision to do so even before coming out of the Forbidding, that she knew even then that she owed the boy that much. She understood from what he had told her how much the girl meant to him and how hard it had been to give up trying to free her and come looking for Grianne instead. That sort of sacrifice deserved more than a simple thank–you. She had waited until things were settled with the order and the treaties between the Federation and Free–born signed before acting. She had waited until his parents had returned home. It wasn’t that she didn’t think they would support their son’s efforts to free Cinnaminson, indeed, they would want to help. But making the attempt was something she had decided she must do with Pen alone, for reasons she had kept to herself. Only Kermadec and his Trolls were invited to come along.

She put a hand on Pen’s shoulder. «You are a lot stronger than you think,” she said. «I want you to remember that. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating what you can do.»

He shrugged. «I’m not very strong, really.» He hesitated. «I think that you are wonderful for doing this. I won’t ever forget, even if we don’t get her back.»

She almost hugged him, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. She had been distanced from others for too long, and although she might feel affection toward them, she was not comfortable with demonstrating it. She still saw herself as an outcast, as someone who didn’t really belong anywhere and would never be close to anyone. Worse, she saw herself as dangerous, more so since the events that had taken place inside the Forbidding. The workings of the wishsong’s magic when she had transformed herself into a Fury and when she had destroyed the Graumth had left her shaken. For the first time since she was a child, she was uncertain of the magic. Something about it was changed—perhaps still changing—and she was not sure how well she could control it.

She looked off into the horizon. «Strength comes to us through belief and determination, Pen. The trick is in recognizing how to use it.»

« You’ve done that better than I have,” he said quietly.

She glanced over at him and smiled.

How I wish that were true.

The grave diggers arrived around midday on their way south, and the old man invited them to eat with him. He set out ale and cheese and bread and sat with the three men around an old wooden table that occupied one corner of the porch and looked out over the fields of wheat he farmed as his family had farmed them for five generations.

« How is it up there?» he asked, after food and drink were consumed and the men were smoking.

The stocky one shook his head. «Bad. A lot of bodies. We did the best we could, along with the others. But they’ll be finding the bones of those we missed for years.»

« At least it’s over,” the old man said.

The tall one shook his head in reproof. «Should have been over years ago. Didn’t accomplish anything, did it? Years and years gone and nothing’s changed. Except a lot of good men are dead.»

« And women,” the stocky one added.

The tall one grunted. «Treaty with the Free–born gives us just exactly what we had before the war started. The only good thing that’s come of all this is we have a new Prime Minister. Maybe he won’t be as stupid as Sen Dunsidan was.»

He looked at the old man. «Did you hear what happened with that one?»

The old man shook his head.

« I heard it from one of the soldiers on theZolomach. He was there and saw it all. They were flying Dunsidan to Arborlon, maybe to make peace, maybe not. There’s some debate. They had that weapon aboard, the one that shot down the Elven King and his whole fleet. Anyway, some Druids intercepted the ship. One of them had a staff with markings that glowed like fire. Soldier who told me this said Sen Dunsidan couldn’t take his eyes off it. The Druids offered it to him, but when he took it, he changed into some sort of monster. Split right out of his skin, like a snake, then disappeared. No one’s seen him since.»

« Druid magic at work there,” the stocky one declared softly. «More of it later, too, if you ask me. The Zolomach sailed back to Arishaig, was there maybe a day, caught fire, and burned to her keel. Everything destroyed. Took that weapon with her.»

« A fire took the place where they built that weapon and the plans for it, too,” the tall one said. «Nothing left but ash and smoke. You’re right about those Druids. They were involved in it. Happened right after the witch reappeared. They thought she was gone, but she won’t ever be gone, that one. Not her. What is it they called her before she was Ard Rhys? Ilse Witch. She comes back and all this happens? Not by chance, I don’t think.»

« Doesn’t matter what you or I think,” the third man said. «What matters is that the war is over, and we can get on with living our lives. There’s been enough madness. I lost a brother and two cousins out there on the Prekkendorran. Everyone lost someone. For what? Tell me that. For what?»

« For Sen Dunsidan and his kind,” the stocky man declared. «For the politicians and their stupid schemes.» He took a long pull on his ale. «This is good,” he said to the old man, smiling. «Good enough to help me forget the smell of all those dead men. Can I trouble you for another glass?»

When they were gone, the old man went back into the house, pulled aside the rug to the storm cellar, and let the two Elves out. They’d been in hiding down there for several weeks, too damaged at first to do much more than sleep and eat, and then too weak to travel. He’d nursed them as best he could, using the remedies and skills he had acquired from his mother when she was still alive and working the fields with him. The man was the worse of the two, shot through with arrows and cut with blades in a dozen places. But the woman wasn’t much better. He’d helped them because they were hurt and that was the kind of man he was. The war on the Prekkendorran was not his war and not his concern. No Federation war ever had been.

« They’re gone,” he said as the two climbed back into the light.

Pied Sanderling glanced around, and then reached back for Troon’s hand. The day was clouded, but warm and calm, and it felt good to come back into the light. The old man brought them up whenever it was safe to do so, but that hadn’t been often until now. They all knew before the treaty what would happen if they were caught out.

« Did you hear what they said?» the old man asked them.

Pied nodded. He was thinking of those who had gone with him into the Federation camp. He was thinking that their efforts had been worth something after all. The tide of war might have turned on the destruction of theDechtera and her deadly weapon. Twenty–four hours later, Vaden Wick had broken the siege, counterattacked, and driven the Federation off the heights. In the end, the Free–born had prevailed.

Now, it seemed, any danger of fresh weapons of the sort theDechtera had carried was ended, as well. If the Druids had intervened, the chances were good that whatever remained of those weapons had been hunted down and destroyed.

« Sit, and I’ll bring you a glass of ale,” the old man offered.

He had saved their lives. He had cared for and protected them while they recovered. He had asked nothing about them, nothing from them. He had been kind to them in a place and time when some would have wished them dead and worked to make the wish a reality. They were Elves and enemy soldiers. The old man didn’t seem to care.

They took chairs at the table while the old man brought the glasses and set them down. When he left to feed the animals in the barn, Pied looked at Troon. «I guess it’s finally over.»

She nodded. They were mirror images of each other, their faces cut and bruised, their limbs bandaged, and their bodies so sore that every movement hurt. But they were alive, which was more than they could say about any of the others who had gone with them that night. They would have been dead, too, if not for the old man. He had been burning off a field he had partially cleared, the fire still bright even after darkness fell, and they had homed in on that beacon. The old man had seen the flit come down, found them in the wreckage, and taken them in. He had thrown what remained of the flit into the fire, and then lied to the Federation soldiers who came looking the next morning. Neither of them knew why. Maybe he was just like that. Maybe, like the grave diggers, he’d had enough of war.

« We can go home now,” he said to her.

She gave him a bitter smile. «To Arborlon? Where Arling is Queen?»

She was reminding him that he was forbidden to return to Arborlon, that Arling had dismissed him from her service.

They stared at each other wordlessly.

« Let’s not go home,” she said finally. She held his gaze. «Let’s go somewhere else. They think we are dead. Let’s leave it that way. Have you anyone waiting for you?»

He thought about Drum for a moment and shook his head. «No.»

« Nor I.» She took a quick breath and exhaled sharply. «Let’s start over. Let’s make a new home.»

He studied her face, appreciating the straightforward, uncomplicated way it revealed her. With Troon, there was never any question about what she was feeling. Certainly, there wasn’t any question there. She was in love with him. She had told him that night on the flit. She had told him any number of times since. The revelation had surprised him, but pleased him, too. Eventually, while they recovered from their wounds, he realized he was in love with her, too.

She reached out for his hands and took them in her own. «I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I don’t want to do it in a place that reminds me of the past. I want to do it where we can start over again and leave behind what we’ve known. Do you love me enough to do that?»

He smiled. «You know I do.»

They smiled at each other across the table, sharing feelings that shouldn’t be put into words because words would only get in the way.

They set theBremen down in the gardens that fronted the bridge to the island of the tanequil, anchoring her well back, but safely within walking distance. Stridegate’s ruins were empty and still on an afternoon filled with sunshine and blue sky. They had flown into the Inkrim that morning, sailing out of night’s departing darkness into dawn’s bright promise, the boy and she standing together at the bow and looking down at the world. They had not spoken a word, lost in their separate thoughts. She thought she could probably guess at his but that he could not possibly know hers.

The Urdas were not in evidence on that visit, but Kermadec and his Trolls kept careful watch for them, even after they were anchored and on the ground. Urdas would not enter the ruins, it was said. They would not come into any place they considered sacred. Kermadec was taking no chances, and sent scouts in all directions with instructions to make sure.

Grianne turned to him. «Keep watch for us, Old Bear,” she said with a smile. «This won’t take long.»

He shook his great, impassive face in disagreement. «I wish you would let this wait for a while longer, Mistress. You have been through too much already. If there is a confrontation down there—”

« There will be no confrontation,” she said quickly, putting a reassuring hand on his armored wrist. She glanced over to where Penderrin stood at the bridgehead, looking over at the island. «This isn’t to be an encounter of that sort.»

She took her hand away. «You were the best of them all,” she told him. «No one was more faithful or gave more to me when it was needed. I will never forget that.»

He looked away. «You should go now, so that you can be back before dark.» There was resignation in his eyes. He knew. «Go, Mistress.»

She nodded and turned away, walking over to join the boy. He glanced at her as she came up beside him, but said nothing. «Are you ready?» she asked.

He shook his head. «I don’t know. What if the tanequil won’t let us cross?»

« Why don’t we see?»

She walked out onto the bridge, the boy following, and called up the magic of the wishsong, humming softly to let it build, working on the message she wanted it to convey. She stopped perhaps a quarter of the way across until she had it just right, then released the magic into the afternoon silence and let it drift downward into the ravine. She gave it the whole of what she thought was needed, taking her time, content to be patient if patience was what was required.

It was not. A response came almost immediately, a shifting of heavy roots within the earth, a rustle of leaves and grasses, a whisper of wind. Voices, soft and lilting, that only she could hear. She understood what it meant.

« Come, Pen,” she said.

They crossed untroubled to the other side of the bridge and walked to the trail that had led the boy into the ravine weeks earlier in his search for Cinnaminson. The island forest was deep and still, the air cooler, the light diffuse, and the earth dappled with layered shadows. She watched Pen cast about, eyes shifting left and right, searching. He was looking for the aeriads, but she already knew they would not come. Nothing would come to them now. Everything was waiting.

They found the trailhead and stopped. The path wound downward in a steep descent that gradually faded into a mix of mist and shadows. It was so dark within the ravine that they could not see the bottom. It was the sort of place she had entered many times. It was a mirror of her heart.

She turned to him. «You are to wait here for me, Pen. I will do this best if I am alone. I know what is needed. I will bring Cinnaminson back to you.»

He studied her face carefully, unable to keep the hope from his eyes. «I know you will try, Aunt Grianne.»

She reached out impulsively and hugged the boy. It was something she had seldom done, and it felt awkward, but the boy was quick to hug her back, and that made her feel better about it.

« Be careful,” he whispered.

She broke away, moving slowly down the trail toward the shadows.

« Thank you,” he called after her. «For doing this.»

She gave him a small wave in response, but did not look back.

The afternoon eased toward evening, and the light shifted and began to fade. Pen stood until he grew tired, then sat with his back against an ancient trunk, staring down into the ravine, keeping watch. He listened for sounds he did not care to think of too carefully, but no sounds came. Silence cloaked the ravine and the forest and, for all he knew, the entire world. He watched patterns of light and shadows form and re–form, slow–moving kaleidoscopic images against the earth. He smelled the scents released into air by the forest and the things that lived there. He rubbed the blunted tips of his damaged fingers and remembered how they had gotten that way. He remembered what it had felt like to become joined to the tanequil through the carving of the runes. He remembered night in the island forest and his terrifying encounter with Aphasia Wye.

Mostly, he remembered Cinnaminson. He could picture her face and the way she smiled. He could remember the way she moved. He could hear her voice. She was there, alive and well within his mind, and it made him want to cry for his loss.

But he smiled instead. He knew she was coming back to him. He believed in his aunt Grianne. He had faith in her magic and her skills, in her promise that she would find a way. He loved Cinnaminson, although he had never loved a girl before and had no frame of reference from which to draw a comparison. But love seemed to him to be a state of mind peculiar to each, and there was no set standard by which you could measure its strength. He knew what he felt for Cinnaminson, and if the difference between what he felt when he had her with him and when he did not was an accurate measure, then he could not imagine how love could be any stronger.

Time slipped away, and at last, when no one had appeared and darkness had begun to close about, he found himself wondering what he would do if his aunt failed and Cinnaminson didn’t come back to him.

He dozed then, made sleepy–eyed by the warmth and brightness of the late afternoon sun slanting down through breaks in the branches of the trees. He did not fall deeply asleep, but hovered at the edge of wakefulness, arms about his drawn–up knees, head sunk on his chest.

Eyes closed, he drifted.

Then something stirred him awake—a whisper of sound, a hint of movement, a sense of presence—and he looked up to find Cinnaminson standing before him. She was more ghost than flesh and blood, pale and thin and disheveled in her tattered clothes. He got to his feet slowly and stood looking at her, afraid that he was mistaken, that he might be hallucinating.

« It’s me, Pen,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.

He didn’t rush to her, didn’t grasp her and hold her close, although he wanted to do that, to make certain of her. Instead, he walked up to her as if time didn’t matter. He took her hands and held them, studying her face, the spray of freckles and the milky eyes. The musty smell of earth and damp emanated from her body, and tendrils of root ends still clung to her arms.

He reached out and touched her face.

« I’m all right,” she said. She touched his face. «I missed you. Even when I was one of them and thought I couldn’t possibly be happier, I remembered you and missed you. I don’t think that ever would have stopped.»

She put her arms around him and held on to him as if she was afraid she would be taken away again, and he could feel her crying against his shoulder. He started to speak, then gave it up and just hugged her, closing his eyes and losing himself in the warmth of her body.

« Who was it who came down for me?» she asked him finally, her voice muffled. She lifted her head from his shoulder put her mouth close to his ear. «I don’t understand it,” she whispered. «Why did she do it? Why did she trade herself for me?»

Pen thought his heart would stop.

In the air above them, the aeriads hummed and sang and danced on the breeze, invisible and soundless. Heedless of time’s passage, they played in the soft glow of the sunset’s red and gold and the evening’s deep indigo. They were spirits unfettered by the restrictions of the human body and the limitations of the human existence. They were sisters and friends, and the whole of the world was their playground.

One strayed momentarily, the newest of them, looking down on the young couple that stood at the edge of the ravine and spoke in soft, comforting tones, their heads bent close. The girl was telling the boy about her, and the boy was trying to understand. She knew it would be hard, that he might never come to terms with what she had done for the girl. But she had done it for herself, too — to give herself a new life, to set herself on a different path, to be reborn. She had known what she would do almost from the time the boy had spoken of the girl’s transformation and of her joy at what she had experienced. She had wanted that for herself. That the boy and the girl would make a better life together than apart was incentive to take the chance. Offer herself for the girl, a woman not so young, but deeply talented and magically enhanced, a creature Mother Tanequil could not help but covet.

The trade was simple, the change of places was done in a heartbeat and a small balance to things was set in place.

Come, sister, the others called to her.

She lingered a moment longer, thinking of what she had given up and finding she had no regrets. There was nothing of her old life that was so precious to her, nothing so compelling as even the first few moments of this new one. Too many years of struggle and travail, of heartbreaking loss and backbreaking responsibility, of failure, ruin, and death had marked the path of her life. She would never escape from it in human form. She knew that; she accepted it. But as a creature of the air she had left it all behind, a part of another life.

She watched the boy and the girl turn away and start back through the woods toward the stone bridge. Maybe they would find in their lives something of what she had failed to find in hers. She had already found something precious in her new form, something she had not known since she was six years old and living still in the house of her parents with her baby brother.

She had found freedom.