Lady of Mercy (The Sundered, Book 3) (6 page)

With a quick, sharp start, she pulled back. Arms tightened around her waist, and the man’s head twisted suddenly to one side. His eyes snapped open.

Green eyes met blackness.

Paralyzed, she sat gazing down at the pale face of the First of Malthan.

“Sara?”

His voice was weak, a pale echo of what it had once been. She tried to pull his arms away.

“Sara.” The word twisted into her, and her arms tightened automatically.

No. NO.
With one vicious tug, she pulled away. Rolling, she got unsteadily to her feet.

He tried to follow, swaying as he stood unsteadily. “Lady?” One pale arm reached outward, hand up and open. “Lady ...” She heard everything in that word, a loneliness and longing too old and too strong for a mortal to contain. She stopped, staring at the outstretched hand, remembering all of the times he had comforted her, playing through her hair or catching her tears as they fell.

Green met black again, and in the slowly dissolving landscape she thought she caught a glistening at the corner of his eyes. She started forward a step and then stopped, for his hands were suddenly red, a deep, brilliant crimson. Of red-fire. Or blood.

Wordless, she turned again, forcing herself to deny the strength of her heritage, the ability to comfort. She was bitterly aware that only her exhaustion allowed her to do so—at any other time the call would have jerked her forward. Unbidden, Belfas’ words came back to her.

She squared her jaw.
I am no slave.

“I have betrayed my line to you once, First of the Enemy. I shall never do so again.”

She began to run.

“Sara....
”

The ground twisted at her feet, becoming once again the flesh of the otherworld; the meeting place of the Servants of Malthan with their Dark Heart.

A dark, shattered wail followed her into the daylight.

 

“Sara?” Darin peered down anxiously at her face, his nose two inches away from hers. He held a small canteen to her lips, and she drank; she was parched. “Are you all right?”

She rose, stumbling against the nearest tree. Her hands touched bark and moss as she righted herself.

“Sara, are you all right?”

“Xes.” A wan smile crept across her lips; it was broken before it caught. “I was stupid,” she said, as she gazed down
at the injury. “It’s been too long since I’ve fought. Telvar would’ve killed me.” Her hand slid suddenly down to her sword; she shook an instant before she found the hilt. Then she nodded, as if satisfied, and began to walk again.

“What are you doing?” Darin ran over and slid an arm beneath her shoulders, bracing himself to take some of her weight. She wasn’t too heavy, and he knew that she wouldn’t allow herself to be.

“Walking,” she answered quietly. “We aren’t there yet.”

“You can’t walk! Sara—you just collapsed! You’ve been unconscious for at least half an hour.”

“That long?” Her face grew pale and more grim. “Then we can’t wait, and we can’t rest. We don’t have any choice. Those Swords weren’t here alone; they never travel without priests. We can’t meet them yet, Darin. We’ve got to find the Woodhall.”

He swallowed. He wanted her to rest and regain her power; only then would she be able to properly heal her leg. But he never wanted to be in the power of a priest of the Enemy again. Shaking, he held the weight she let him carry, and they began to traverse the forest.

 

Belfas was dead.

Glimmering over the red of early morn, she could see the liquid sheen across his open eyes. His eyes, already shadowed, already dimming.

Everywhere she walked, she felt his dying presence. Those trees, growing greener with sunlight, might have shaded them while they practiced, swords in hand, Erin the better, always the better, of the two. Those mosses, those wildflowers, those fallen logs—any might have been a place where she and Belfas went for privacy, on the occasions when he could convince her that a day of rest was called that for a reason.

Elliath’s holdings had been here, across these miles of thick, strange forest, with these trees that had changed in shape and size and color. The shadowed light taunted her cheeks with its gaudy splash between leaves and branches; insects blurred across air, buzzing happily and audibly in their flashes of incandescent color. She knew these; her line’s death was writ large around her in the things that remained alive.

Every so often she would look at Darin’s bowed head or bent back and then look again more closely. All that she remembered
had closed around her tightly, and she knew now who he reminded her of.

Those that were dead.

Years had passed since she’d walked the forest this way. The pack at her shoulder held snares and dry supplies; there was a water flask at her hip, twin to the one Darin wore. Bedrolls, a small tent, a few utensils—all of these had been provided. But not only these. A sword, longer than she was used to, two daggers, and her robes had also been left at the gate. By Gervin.

He, too, was dead.

The answer was too hard to accept.

“Well?” Lord Erliss’ tone was brittle and chilly; it gave voice
to his impatience and anxiety, where mere words did not.

Tarantas smiled almost beatifically. “Yes. There is one. That person has the strongest taint of our Enemy’s blood that I have yet felt. It will be dangerous.”

“That,” Erliss said, as he relaxed marginally, “is not for you to decide.”

The Swords waited the outcome of the discussion in silence—and at a crisp attention usually reserved for the formal sacrifices of the year’s quarters. Erliss was young enough to demand this detail and powerful enough to get it—just.

The silence stretched thinly; Erliss waited for Tarantas to continue, and the older man waited for Erliss to ask. Tarantas won the quiet contest.

“Where is that one?”

“He or she has only just started to move again.” He turned around to gaze northward.

“And has he visited this fortress that you seek?”

A white brow rose a fraction over Tarantas’ left eye. “Of course not. Power such as that—the opening of the portal—I could feel without casting my nets. But I do not think it the boy; the woman is the more likely of the two. And we do not know the capacities of either; don’t think in terms of one alone.”

Erliss found the trees overhead oppressive and annoying; he glared up at them, then wheeled around to study the expressions that lined the faces of his Swords. “Can we move, then?” He asked at last.

“Do you wish to warn them early?” the priest asked, rising
from the soft ground and adjusting his beard’s fall. “No? Good. I have done what I can to obscure our presence—but it will be sought, I assure you. They are on the move, Lord Erliss, but they travel slowly. I think, when next they stop, we will have time to properly prepare.”

“Very well,” the young lord said, as he slid his hands behind his back and clasped them, hard. “We will wait. But Tarantas?”

“Don’t lose them,” the old man said. He had heard it at least thirty times since he had begun to trace the path.

 

Orvas blossoms pushed white heads up through the shadowed undergrowth. They were fresh and new, and no season’s change would dim their brilliant color. A scent, clinging to breeze, brushed past Darin and his lady as they walked.

“Sara?”

“Yes?”

“We could stop for a bit. I could brew orvas leaves, or try.” He started to bend, and she caught his shoulders, straightening them into a stand. “But it’d help.”

“After the Woodhall.” She looked over her shoulder, and then back. “Something feels wrong; I’m not sure what. But if I had to guess, I’d say that the priests have been warned. We have almost no time.”

“But wouldn’t they have been here by now?”

It was the right question, but the wrong time to say it; her brow rippled, and her face became set. She started to walk forward; he struggled to keep up with her speed. But he cringed as her feet passed almost clumsily over the orvas blossoms, crushing the occasional petal and whole flower. She didn’t seem to notice.

Orvas blossoms became less rare, and where the trees at the road’s edge had been dark and uniform in height, bark, and color, the trees in the forest’s heart were different. They were no less lofty, no less aged—but they were silver-barked, with golden leaves and white, full flowers; and although their leaves were just as wide and greedy with the sun’s light, the forest floor beneath them was bright with greens and blues and little shocks of color.

“The Lady’s trees,” Sara whispered, looking up. Her body shivered once and then her muscles relaxed.

Darin grunted; she suddenly weighed a lot more. “The Lady?”

“Of Elliath,” she answered—and then looked at his upturned face; her own tightened again for a moment, but this time it passed. “Not of Mercy, Darin. She was the first of the Servants of the Bright Heart.”

“I know her,” he said, although it had been five years or more since he’d last heard the name. “She built the walls of Dagothrin with the power of God. She promised that they’d never be taken from without.”

“Dagothrin?”

“The city. I lived there.”

“Then it fell.”

They lapsed into silence as the flowers grew whiter and the trees more majestic. And that silence held pain, but as they walked, Darin felt the warmth and peace of the Lady’s forest; the soothing silence that hinted at sleeping life, and the fragrance of the blossoms that crowned the Lady’s trees. As those trees continued to grow in age and number, he felt as if he were stepping backward in time, into a different season, where the height of summer had not yet given way to the golds and the reds of autumn.

He thought it would be pleasant to walk, just walk, in these woods forever. He thought that they might be proof against the darkness and the Enemy’s many priests, no matter what Sara might say. He thought many, many things.

But they vanished when he saw the Tree.

It rose on a trunk the width of many men and towered into the sky. No mortal spires, he was certain, could ever rise so gracefully or powerfully upward. Even the lowest of the tree’s many branches, thicker than his chest, stood twice or three times his height above the ground—and flowers of gold and white, perfect, and untroubled by even breeze, bloomed everywhere. The bark of the tree was gold with flecks of brown; it was almost smooth to the touch.

Everywhere that he looked, he could see the faint trace of pale, green light. It reminded him of the Gifting.

“This is it,” Sara said softly. “The Lady’s Woodhall.” She pulled herself away from Darin’s support and managed not to stumble.

“But it’s—it’s only a tree.”

“It’s a door, a gate.” She took a step forward. Her fingers she spread out against the smooth bark; she mouthed words too quick and fleeting for Darin to catch. “But here I must go on alone.”

“Alone?”

She nodded almost sadly. “The Hall won’t grant you entrance, Darin. You’re not of my blood—and more important, not of the blood of the Lady.” She began to lift her arms to either side and let them drop. Turning, she gave Darin a fierce, quick hug.

“You’ll be safe enough here—I’ve never heard of any harm coming to the lines in the Lady’s wood.” She released him and turned to face the tree again. “If I could, I’d take you with me. I—” Shaking her head, she walked forward and wrapped her arms around the tree’s large trunk.

At least, that’s what she appeared to do. But even as Darin watched, he saw her
melt
into the wood itself—as if the tree were slowly opening up to swallow her. He started forward, half in alarm, and was halted by Bethany’s voice.

But she
—

Darin stopped moving, but only barely. He wanted to tell Bethany that it was not for her safety that he feared. The priests were about in the forest, searching or waiting, or maybe both. He would rather have dared the Lady’s spell than wait outside, alone. He didn’t tell Bethany; he knew that it would not change the fact that he would not be allowed to enter the Hall. Instead, he pulled the staff from its place at his back and took a seat on the forest floor, facing the tree.

And as he watched it, he felt what Sara must have felt the first time she had seen the doors to the Woodhall. He let his vision be absorbed by the great Tree until he could see nothing else. And he felt the peace of the Lady touch him with its precarious fingers.

 

Erin was certain her teeth had come through her lower lip. She was also certain that she must be splayed out against the
marbled floor of the Lady’s Hall; her stomach was still spinning from the awkward transition. She was very surprised when she opened her eyes and found herself standing—or wobbling—on two feet.

The last time wasn’t this bad.
She stretched out one arm and felt a wall beneath her open palm.
Of course not, idiot. The last time the Lady waited.
Grimly she forced herself to stand apart from the wall. She hadn’t the time for the luxury of confusion.

Looking ahead, she saw the long, arched hallway before her—a standing monument to the will of the Lady and the power of Lernan’s Gifting. The ceiling was about twenty feet above the ground, and it easily dwarfed her, although she was certain that had she been forced to crouch under a ceiling of dubious height, she would still feel no less dwarfed. Things magical were here; things of the blood that she could never hope to duplicate and that would never be made again. A familiar tingle traced itself along her spine, causing her to shudder. Line Elliath calling its own.