Bound by Blood and Sand (23 page)

“I think I could stay out here forever,” Jae said.

Tal made a quiet noise of assent, and after a moment, Elan said, “I would stay with you.”

Jae blinked, and twisted to stare at him. He wasn't looking at her, and the moonlight was bright against his face but threw the rest of him into shadow.

“Interesting choice,” Tal said to him.

Elan shrugged a little. “It's not like I have anything to go back to. No one who knew me will ever speak to me again.”

“I'm sorry,” Tal said.

“I'm not,” Elan said. “Not
too
sorry, anyway. I chose…I knew what he'd do if I questioned him. And I did it anyway.”

“Why?” Jae asked, letting her genuine curiosity win out over good manners. She only knew what it was like to fight for every scrap she had; she couldn't imagine having so much and walking away from it all.

Elan looked back at her. “I thought that was obvious.”

She blinked. That answer wasn't exactly helpful. Next to her, Tal chuckled so softly that Jae felt the movement more than anything else. She elbowed him gently.

“Because I believe in you,” Elan said. “And…and I wanted to help people. Even back at Danardae, when Lady Palma asked me to speak to my father about her estate…I knew something wasn't right, and I wanted to help. I thought my fa—His Highest”—Elan stumbled over the title—“
was
helping. It's his sworn duty. But he wasn't. He's a liar and—everything I believed was a lie, and—once I knew the truth, I couldn't ignore it.”

Jae had even less of an idea what to say to that, but Tal mused, “No wonder he disavowed you. But I think you're better off without him.”

“So do I,” Elan said. “I just wish…My sister. I won't miss the rest of them, but if my sister knew the truth, she'd do the right thing, too.”

“She might already know,” Jae said. “She's the heir.”

“She doesn't,” Elan said, conviction ringing in his voice. “She'd never stand for the lies.”

Jae doubted that, but she'd never met Elan's sister, so she didn't say anything. With everything Elan had lost, if he needed to have faith in his sister, she wouldn't fight him on that. Especially not when Tal rolled over next to her and she thought about losing him. She couldn't imagine coping after that. Losing Tal would be like the brand on Elan's skin. A painful wound that might someday scab over but never fully heal, leaving a scar that would last forever.

Elan had given himself that wound by believing Jae, by following her. He'd done what he thought was right, and had lost everything for it.

Jae rolled away from Tal a little bit, tucked her hands under her head, and went back to watching the stars. She didn't look over at Elan again, but she couldn't forget how near he was, either.

Guilt gnawed at her, a feeling oddly like hunger, but she refused to dwell on it. Sighing, she tried to find a comfortable position on the cold, muddy ground.

Tal nudged her, and when she looked at him, he raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

She frowned, answering with a question of her own.

He nodded toward Elan.

She turned away, not wanting to ask what Tal was thinking. Even out here the Curse would force him to answer honestly, and she didn't think she wanted to hear it.

Elan stared down at the Well. From up here on the cliff top he could see for ages into the distance, but he still couldn't make out the far shore. Even if the Well was going dry the way Jae believed, it was incredible. With rays from the morning sun reflecting and dazzling, it was almost too beautiful to look at.

No wonder people had been willing to fight for the Well, to die to possess it. It was beauty and power both, a hypnotic combination. He'd always lived comfortably at Danardae, knowing he'd never want for water, as his family controlled one of the four enormous linked reservoirs. But they were nothing compared to this. Even if, generations ago, the Highest had somehow rightfully controlled those four reservoirs—a fact he now doubted—he could understand why they hadn't been enough. Nothing would be, compared to this.

He shuddered at the thought. Maybe he could understand the urge to seize all of this, but to actually
do
it—to fight a war that had killed thousands, to enslave generations of people to maintain control—was unforgivable. He hated that he could understand the urge. He hated that understanding made him even a little bit like those liars—those
traitors
—and like his father.

“I think I could watch the water for the rest of my life and never grow tired of it,” Tal said.

“I imagine sunset will be a spectacle,” Elan agreed. Even dawn, creeping up from the cliffs behind them, had been gorgeous. Watching the sun kiss the water when it dropped below the horizon…that would be a kind of magic all its own. Elan had been too exhausted to think to watch last night; he would be sure to tonight.

They'd eaten after dawn, and Jae had decided to try to find the Well's binding again—but from the shore this time. The magic wouldn't be as easy to locate if she wasn't immersed in it, but at least she wouldn't be in danger of drowning. It was Tal who'd suggested that he and Elan hike back to the top of the cliff and explore the orchard while she worked. They could gather more food and see if there was anything else worth finding. If the people Jae called the Wellspring Bloodlines had really stayed up there for so long that they'd grown a whole orchard to feed themselves, they probably hadn't camped the whole time. Maybe there was some kind of shelter left, the remains of a building the three of them could use instead of sleeping under the stars or beneath the branches.

Exploring the orchard required turning away from the stunning sight of the Well. Elan willed himself to do it. Tal joined him, and they made their way from the cliff and into the trees.

“I've never seen anything like this, either,” Elan said as they walked. “Even in our finest groves, the trees have to be kept small. But these look like they've been growing since the Well was founded.”

Tal reached up to pluck a fruit from one of the trees as they passed, and clawed the rind off. “Well, if Jae's right, they have been,” Tal said. “The way she described it, it sounded like they live at least as much on magic as they do on water and sunlight.”

“They'd have to. Not much light down here,” Elan pointed out. The underbrush was just as enormously overgrown as the trees were. Bushes came up to his waist, and he had to stop and push past them more often than branches from the fruit trees. Most of the trees were so huge that their branches were higher up, the lowest just within reach, and their trunks were so wide that Elan couldn't wrap his arms around them.

“I hope Jae will have a chance to come explore up here,” Tal mused. He popped a section of the fruit into his mouth. “She's always been good with plants. She loves the garden at home. I know it doesn't look like much, but it would be nothing at all without her.”

Elan nodded a little. He'd grown up with Danardae's splendid gardens, all carefully tended, bright and colorful and controlled. Aredann's had been dismal by comparison. Not just lacking in plant life, but tiny. But after having spent time at Aredann, Elan understood just how hard Jae must have worked to keep the garden alive at all.

“It's good she was placed as the groundskeeper, then,” Elan said.

“It was no coincidence,” Tal said. “She was good at it—even when she was young. When there was a Twill groundskeeper, she assisted him. When he left…It wasn't long after Lord Savann died in the desert. Lady Shirrad was inconsolable, but she confided in me often enough—it's not as if I could tell anyone her secrets. I managed to convince her that Jae would be best suited to working the grounds.”

Elan shook his head in wonder. Shirrad must have been terrified and desperate to confide in one of the Closest at all—to see them as anything more than obedient shadows. Even after his whole world had been upended, Elan still found that strange. The idea of an Avowed guardian conversing with Closest was madness. But Lady Shirrad had, and he could only admire Tal for finding a way to use it to his advantage.

“If you hadn't been born a Closest, I wonder what you'd be,” Elan mused. “I think you'd have been
very
successful if you were Avowed. You know, all of this—everything—it would have gone very differently if you'd discovered that magic instead of Jae. I think I'd have had a much easier time reasoning with you.”

“Then it's probably for the best it was Jae,” Tal said, and though he sounded lighthearted, Elan sensed there was something under that laugh.

“Why's that?” Elan asked. Then, “Sorry, you don't have to—”

But the compulsion had already hit Tal, who gave Elan a dark look as he answered, “It would have been easier for
you
if I'd had Jae's magic. I'd have been reasonable, and I'd have convinced you to be reasonable, too. I would have made sure things were easy for me and Jae and Gali from then on, taken care of them. But I'm not like Jae. I would never have had the courage to kill Rannith—or to attack your father. And we'd never have ended up out here.”

“I thought you hated that Jae did all that,” Elan said, remembering Tal's comments. He shoved the prickly branches of another bush out of his way. Careful not to ask it as a question, he added, “I thought you wanted her to be merciful.”

He held the branches so Tal could follow him. “I do. But you were right—there
will
be war. And I hope she will be merciful, because I think that will make it easier to find a way forward. But I know, I
know,
she will do whatever it takes to free us.”

What it might take would be violence. Destruction. Elan shivered in the shade as he edged around one of the enormous trees, only to find that another one had grown so large and so close that there was no room to squeeze between them.

“Then it's lucky she listens to you,” Elan said. “If you ask her to have mercy, she will.”

“She'll do what she thinks is right,” Tal said, but he sounded thoughtful.

Elan kicked his way past a smaller bush, still looking for a gap between the trees. Instead he hit yet another trunk, grown so wide that the two trees were now practically fused into one.

“Odd,” Tal said from behind him. “All the trees have been wide and close, but these are more like a wall than anything else.”

“Yeah,” Elan said, and then it struck him. “But walls have doors.”

“You think…” Tal trailed off.

“They were grown by magic. And these are
not
normal trees. They aren't even fruit trees like the others. Look at them,” Elan said as he realized it himself. The bark on these trees was smoother, silvery-white instead of brown or red. Their branches were high overhead—much higher than Elan could reach, even by jumping. There were no knots in the trunks, either. Nowhere to grab and climb. A wall of trees like this wouldn't be impenetrable to people with axes, or to fire—but it would be a long, hard job to get through.

The trunk gave way to another, and then another, before he and Tal found it—a gap, not between trunks but carved into one. It was a small arched opening. The shape looked too much like one of the hallway entrances at Aredann or Danardae for it to be natural. Thick, heavy vines grew across and inside it. They seemed to be growing out of the tree trunk itself, like a curtain.

“Looks like you were right,” Tal said, and reached for one of the vines. He twisted and tugged, and it broke, but there were dozens left. “This would be faster if we had a knife.”

“Or magic,” Elan said. If they couldn't get through themselves, they could bring Jae up to try it. But he wasn't ready to give up so quickly. The vines were thick and sturdy, hard to tear but not too hard to move. It took a lot of untangling and pulling, and the vines didn't just block the front of the tree. They grew all the way through it. He and Tal both worked at yanking and untangling vines until they were sweating, even in the shade of the orchard, until finally they'd pulled open a hole big enough to scurry through, hunched over, with vines still scraping at their faces and limbs.

The sun hit Elan hard the moment he broke through. He tumbled out of the way so Tal could join him, and then looked up. The trees reached like monuments to the sky, but their branches were latticed at the top, forming a patchwork roof that still allowed sunshine through. The space was the size of Lady Shirrad's study at Aredann, and walls had been erected that reached up almost to where the branches began. The walls formed a shape with odd corners, none meeting squarely like a normal room, but they were flat rather than matching the curving of the trees behind them.

And like at any of the mage-built estates, the walls were art.

“Incredible,” Tal breathed, walking the perimeter of the room, his fingers brushing the wall. Elan took in the largest of the walls, a long, flat space across from him, and saw that it was a portrait made out of tiny tiles, carefully placed, untouched by dust and unfaded despite the sun. It was a woman, her skin a rich brown, her hair pulled into thick coils and tied into a knot on top of her head. She wore a deep red-and-gold robe and held a knife in one hand and a flower in the other. Her smile was calm and kind—
wise,
Elan thought. The edges of the mural were ringed with familiar vine patterns dotted by bright flowers. Elan traced it with his hand and realized it was the same four circles overlapping at the center that made up the fountain back at Aredann, with the woman placed in the space at the middle.

“It's the same as the fountain,” Elan told Tal.

“I don't suppose you recognize that woman,” Tal said.

Elan shook his head. “If the Highest didn't craft the Well, then I have no idea who did, but I imagine she was one of them.”

Tal nodded thoughtfully, and they both resumed inspecting the beautiful tiled walls. The next largest, across from the woman, was a wall made mostly of tannish-orange tiles, with a handful of bright blue and green circles and a few lines, but again, something familiar tugged at Elan's mind. He studied this picture more carefully, ignored the placement of the green shapes in favor of the blue—

“It's a map!”

Tal stared at him.

“It is,” Elan said, calmer this time. He pointed to the familiar cluster of four circles. They were a little messier than the circles of the fountain, but very similar to those and the circles around the woman in the other mosaic. There was a red flower, the only other color on the map, right at the center where the four circles overlapped.

“Those are the reservoirs of the central cities. This one is Danardae,” Elan explained. The blue and green splotches ran up against each other, with green almost outlining the four overlapping blue circles. “The blue areas are reservoirs; the green are cities—or at least fields, farmable land.”

He knew the shape of the world well enough to recognize other estates, now that he had picked the four central cities and their reservoirs out. He traced a path outward and westward and tapped a finger against another green-blue combination. “This one is Aredann. So this”—he gestured at a much larger blue spot, near the edge of the wall—“must be the Well.”