Straken (56 page)

“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 the
Dechtera
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 the
Dechtera
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.

T
hey set the
Bremen
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.

T
he 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.

I
n 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.