The Great Tree of Avalon (20 page)

Desperately, he scanned the grove for any sign of skunkweed, the one plant whose smell was strong enough to drive off the worms. If, that is, its leaves could be crushed before the worms started digging in. After that, there was nothing to do but pull them off one by one—and tear off bloody chunks of skin with them.

Tamwyn frowned. No skunkweed! Only seconds remained.

In a flash, he turned to Fairlyn, who was just slogging out of the pool. “Fairlyn! Can you smell like skunkweed? Quick—for Llynia!”

The tree spirit straightened her trunk and eyed him suspiciously. A faint aroma of sour milk wafted from her branches.

“No, no. Trust me.” He pointed at the huddled priestess, who was trying to wipe the mud out of her eyes and ears. “Flesh-eating worms! The smell of skunkweed is her only chance.”

Instantly, Fairlyn’s boughs snapped toward Llynia. At the same time, they released a choking, rancid, overpowering smell. It was worse than a whole family of enraged skunks.

Tamwyn jumped aside just as a mass of writhing worms tumbled out of Llynia’s hair. The worms tried to burrow into the dirt, or scurry back to the pool—anything they could do to get away from the smell. Unfortunately, Llynia saw them, too. She flew to her feet and shook herself violently, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Any worms that didn’t move fast enough were crushed beneath her shoes.

It took more than an hour of searching the area for Tamwyn to find even a trickle of a stream. Flowing out of a cracked stone on the hillside above the cedars, it wound down a narrow gully until it sank again into the ground. But it was all the trekkers needed for their baths. Everyone took advantage of the opportunity—except for Henni, who scoffed at the idea of washing up.

Llynia used some soaproot found by Nuic to remove the mud and the potent smell of skunks (moaning all the while that even another Drumadian bath couldn’t get her clean now). Next came Elli, who had finally freed herself from the vine, though not without getting sticky cedar sap in her hair. She scrubbed her hair in the pool, pausing only to shoot dagger-looks at Tamwyn. Last of all, Tamwyn himself washed up, removing at last the stains of balloonberries and the smell of dung. All through the bathing, Fairlyn kept her roots in the water, drinking gladly, while Nuic merely sat upstream, enjoying the feel of cool spray on his back.

Neither of the priestesses bothered to thank Tamwyn for finding the stream. In fact, neither of them spoke to him at all. But he didn’t mind. At least now he felt clean.

Still, like everyone else, he remained thirsty. Even a prolonged drink at the cracked stone didn’t help, for his thirst ran deeper than tongue and throat. His very blood seemed thickened by drought.

And Tamwyn’s heart ached for the thirsty land around him. It didn’t take a wilderness guide to see how much all these trees, grasses, ferns, and mosses needed water. So did the birds who sang plaintively from the bushes, and the newts who scurried away on the rocks. Usually, at this time of year, when new snow started falling on the high peaks, these hills sang with freshwater streams. But now the bland-colored stones and dry gullies didn’t sing at all.

16
•
Emissaries of the Gods

This is the noisiest bunch I’ve ever trekked with.
Tamwyn shook his head in dismay—though just gently, since he didn’t want to drop any of the gear piled high on his back. That would only give Henni something new to harass him about.
Really, they make about as much noise as an army of gnomes.

His dismay only grew with each passing day. Much of the time, as they tramped through forested hills and along dry riverbeds, the travelers scrapped with each other. Llynia complained that they were losing precious time; Elli often agreed and suggested that Llynia should walk faster—not exactly what Llynia wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Henni missed no chances to tease Tamwyn, Fairlyn smelled like something horrible, and Nuic grumbled constantly about how much the world (especially priestesses and porters) had degenerated over the past few centuries. Although Llynia never actually asked Tamwyn’s advice, she often put him in the lead and let him guide the group north—always badgering him from behind about his clumsiness. Which, of course, delighted Henni even more.

In this way, the group trudged northward toward the Dun Tara snowfields—and the portal that Llynia insisted would take them to Woodroot, for the secret purpose that she wouldn’t discuss in the porters’ presence. Tamwyn had tried, for several days running, to tell her what he knew about that portal, but she wouldn’t even begin to listen. Finally, fed up with her obstinance, he’d decided just to let her find out herself. The result would be quite entertaining—well worth a few days’ labor as a porter.

After the seventh day of trekking, Tamwyn picked a low, rounded knoll for their camp that night. Stubby grass, faded yellow in color, covered its top. A tiny pool of water bubbled at its base, barely enough to supply the group’s needs. The pool was so small, and hidden behind a fold of the ground, that Tamwyn wouldn’t have seen it at all but for the family of water faeries hovering there.

The luminous blue wings of the faeries caught the light, flashing like translucent sapphires. There were five of them in all, a pair of adults and three young ones. All wore the silver-blue tunics and dewdrop-shaped shoes common to water faeries. The father also wore a belt of dried red currants, and the mother carried a backpack made from a periwinkle shell in which she carried their youngest child.

As Tamwyn approached, he nodded in greeting.
Good day to you, friends.
As always, the words to communicate with nonhuman creatures simply formed in his mind. He wondered why other humans didn’t seem to use this silent language. Was it too difficult? That couldn’t be right, since it felt just as easy as human speech to him. More likely they had lived for so long in villages, away from most other creatures, that they’d simply forgotten how.

The father faery lifted up from the pool with a spray of water droplets from his wingtips. He gestured angrily at Tamwyn.

You have a point
, the young man replied.
How can any day be good when there’s so little water around?
He listened as the faery said something else.
Well, I hope you find that spot to your liking! I’ve heard there are some nice waterfalls there, meltoff from the Dun Tara snowfields.

The faery waved, not angrily this time. He swooped back to the pool, helped his wife gather the children, and flew away. Their luminous blue wings hummed softly and then disappeared behind the knoll.

Tamwyn dropped his load and started to make camp. As always, his first task was to build a fire—no trouble for him, even when there wasn’t so much dry kindling around. Perhaps it was his experience as a woodsman . . . or perhaps his flamelon ancestry somehow gave him an affinity with flames. Either way, making a campfire seemed as natural as making a wish.

He started by walking over to an old hawthorn tree that he’d noticed near the knoll. One of its lower branches, broken by a storm, hung by a few shreds of bark. Hawthorn burned with lots of heat, and this branch was just the right thickness for long-lasting coals.

He stood before the tree and bent his head in greeting. Then, as was the custom of fire builders since the earliest days of Avalon, he asked:

Friendly tree both strong and high,
Answer now in truth: May I
Take your limb to warm my own,
Cook my food, or heat my home?

The tree’s remotest twigs stirred ever so slightly. Abruptly the whole tree shrugged—whether from a sudden gust of wind or from its own inner will, it was hard to tell. But that was enough to break off the remaining bark, and the branch fell to the ground. With a nod of thanks, Tamwyn took it back to the knoll.

Now that he had the wood he needed, lighting the fire was easy. A few scrapes of the iron stones that he kept in his pocket, and his ball of tinder grass caught a spark. He placed it on a patch of bare soil near the top of the knoll, well away from any overhanging branches. For he knew well that the hardest part of making a fire in these days of drought was keeping it safely under control.

Once he started cooking supper—a hearty vegetable stew—only Elli made some effort to help, peeling some yellow tubers that she’d found in the forest. But she sat on the other side of the fire from him, facing the opposite direction. There was no chance she would speak to Tamwyn, let alone look at him directly—which suited him just fine.

After a while, Nuic ambled up the knoll, carrying an armful of bay leaves and garlic grass. The little sprite dropped his ingredients into Tamwyn’s pot, and then sat on the grass beside Elli. Caustically, he grumbled, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Llynia was really the child of the Dark Prophecy.”

Behind them, Tamwyn perked up. He continued to make the stew, dicing and mixing in various dried vegetables, grains, bark strips, and oils supplied by the Society of the Whole. But all the while, his woodsman’s ears listened with keen interest.

“I’ve thought the same thing myself,” agreed Elli. “But she’s too old—by about twenty years, I’d guess. And I heard she came from Stoneroot, not where most Drumadians seem to think the Dark one was born.”

She paused, running her fingers through the low grass. “Why do they say the child was probably born in Fireroot?”

Tamwyn jolted, dropping some carrots.

“Hmmmpff. Don’t you know that? Fireroot was one of the only places where there were children born that year. The flamelons refused to go along with the ban on having babies, suspecting that the whole Prophecy was just a trick by humans to get them to reduce their numbers.”

“Always thinking about war, aren’t they?” Elli shook her head, thick with curls. “If I ever meet a peaceful flamelon, I’ll be shocked.”

Tamwyn wanted to shout:
My mother was peaceful!
But he held his tongue.

The pinnacle sprite’s colors darkened. “Wrong, Elliryanna. If you ever meet a peaceful flamelon, don’t be shocked. Be frightened. That’s so unlikely, it could well be a disguise.”

Sucking in her breath, Elli said, “You mean . . .”

“Correct.” Ribbons of gray and black swept over Nuic’s body. “It could be the Dark child.”

For a long moment, they sat in silence. Then Elli rose, scooped up Nuic, and walked down the slope.

As Tamwyn stirred his pot of stew, starset’s flash of light wove golden threads into the limbs of trees and the lines of stones. Yet he hardly noticed: He couldn’t help but wonder about what he’d just heard. Was he, being at least half flamelon, never going to be truly peaceful? And was that the same as being truly at peace?

Then his thoughts turned to the most disturbing question of all. What if, despite everything he believed about himself, he really was the child of the Dark Prophecy? The person who would cause the end of Avalon?

No! He shook his head, brushing his long black hair against his shoulders. That was impossible. And yet . . . he did have a special knack for causing disasters. Whether it was losing Scree, getting banished by Lott, or destroying Elli’s harp, trouble seemed to follow him like a shadow. And always had.

He stirred the stew more vigorously than ever. At the bottom of the knoll, he could see Llynia stride past Elli, who was standing by an old beech tree, and Henni, who was tossing pebbles at a raccoon that wanted to sleep. The priestess continued up the slope, swept past Tamwyn without so much as a word, and stopped only when she reached the top.

There Llynia sat down, legs folded and back straight, all set for her evening prayers. As always for this ritual, she had donned a fresh set of clothes: today’s choice, a white robe embroidered with green threads, a silver sash, and a necklace of speckled brown beads. In her hands she held her volume of
Cyclo Avalon
, open to the page that began the lore of élano.

Her face seemed troubled, but Tamwyn wouldn’t have guessed that right now she wasn’t worried about the success of her quest, or the time they’d lost trekking. No, her greater worries now involved herself—her powers. Just when, she asked herself fretfully,
will my visions fully return?

She craned her neck, looking up at the constellation commonly called the Circles—two rings of stars, one inside the other. Drumadians, though, had their own name for it: the Mysteries. This constellation, more than any other, inspired thoughts about the seventh sacred Element. The outer circle, made of twenty-one stars with hints of green and scarlet, was called Mystery of Life. It was here that Llynia directed most of her prayers; it had always reminded her of a jeweled crown. The inner circle, with eleven stars and an aura of lavender blue, was called Mystery of Spirit. It seemed pretty enough to Llynia, but cool and distant, not so inspiring.

“O Goddess, God, and all there is,” she began, her upturned face washed in the light of the stars. “Tonight I pray for more than my own strength of body and purpose. Tonight I pray for all of Avalon, the Great Tree that holds our world and connects it to all other worlds.”

She paused, breathing deeply the cool air of evening. “I call to you, Lorilanda, spirit of rebirth, and to you, Dagda, spirit of wisdom—my great lights in this time of deepening darkness. Please guide me . . . and help me find what I need! For only then can I lead my people through this night of torment and into a new day, a new world, when all your creations may reach their highest forms. There are those who seek to control this world, as well as others; but there are those, such as you, who seek only to give free peoples the right to choose their own destinies. And so I ask your blessing—as well as your help. And as always, I offer you my gratitude, along with my life.”

Llynia focused her gaze on the Mysteries, watching the two sparkling circles with not just her eyes but also her inner Sight. As she had done every night since the start of the journey, she tried to clear her mind completely—not easy, given the persistent smell of skunkweed that still clung to her hair. But she willed herself to open her Inner Eye, to show her at least a glimpse of the future, perhaps of the Lady she so dearly wanted to meet.