The Land's Whisper (19 page)

Isvelle’s eyes flashed dangerously. “But she
did.
She
did
exist…” Her lids fluttered shut, and her
throat gulped as if seeking to swallow a rancid-tasting
reality.

“Because someone took her, I lost my best
friend—my Jasiq—and my little girl.” She shuddered, and her eyes
met Darse’s. “I have fought bitterness every day since. Every
day.
”

Isvelle peered down at her fists. No longer
languid, they were white and fiercely clenched. Shakily, she opened
her fingers and pushed the creases out of her dress.

This woman is more absent than here,
he realized.

“Darse, I cannot hope that this will amount
to anything.” She waved her hand to indicate the letter. “I
cannot!
Too many have been destroyed over this…too many.”
She stood erect and strangely composed.

“I am sorry about your family, Isvelle,”
Darse said, but his mind raced under the pressure of the seal.
What is Ordah thinking? I have nothing! What does this have to
do with me?

She turned and nodded, lips pursed in
discomfort. “There is more.”

Isvelle’s voice lowered, and, although still
melodic, it now contained a cold and lethal bite. Darse’s arms
clothed themselves in goose bumps. “When Colette went missing, her
father lost control, but Deniel was affected too. Deniel was her
childhood friend. They were not related, but they called each other
brother and sister. He came to live with us when he was ten orbits
and had barely tasted eighteen when she disappeared. He felt her
loss keenly. I’ve never seen a boy so anchored to a purpose as he
was to finding her again… He searched for moons, seasons, orbits,
showing up only for brief periods to rest and get supplies. Even
after all this time he’s refused to let it go…” She inhaled
raggedly. “He never let more than two moons pass without sending me
a letter or some word of progress. Now? It has been eight since I
have heard from him…” A soft sigh escaped her lips. “He didn’t have
to be my son for me to love him as one.”

Her last words hit achingly close to his own
heart.

Isvelle leaned her head back, and even the
sky seemed to blanket her in despondency. She was no longer the
beautiful creature of light he had once glimpsed.

“Darse, everyone who has sought Colette has
lost his life. And how can I ask
you—
a foreigner and
stranger—to find someone you don’t even know? In a land you don’t
know? It would be foolishness! How can my heart hope in what is
sure to end tragically? How many will die trying to find my girl
who…who has probably known death for orbits?”

Then she began to laugh. Darse’s eyebrows
jumped and his face narrowed, but then his shoulders relaxed
slightly as he took her in. The laugh was soft and small, the kind
that is directed at oneself. “And yet…” Her eyes went alight and
suddenly streamed silver tears. “And yet…how could I be a mother
and not?”

She reached over and placed her hand on
Darse’s wrist. He was surprised at its warmth and gentleness. Their
eyes locked, blue meeting blue.

“Darse. I can only ask…but please… Bring
back my daughter. Bring her back. I cannot rest until I have her
back. Bring her to me.” Her voice was fiery and royal, but most of
all, it was maternal. There was something rousing in her that would
tear apart the world to save her baby.

His heart swelled with compassion, but sense
nonetheless remained. “I cannot. I cannot risk Bren. I cannot—”

“You think him safe as a Keeper?”

Darse’s throat constricted.
She does
know.

“How tame do you believe this connection to
be? And beyond that, do you think she is the only nurest ever to
have disappeared?” Her blue eyes now bore into him with ferocious
intensity. “I will not beg or order you on this fool’s errand. But
you must flee this place regardless. For the boy’s sake.”

“We cannot go back.” His fingertips tingled
under the memory of the cool cave wall that refused to yield. He
heard a visnat’s voice echo in ear:
Only good for getting in,
only good for getting in, only good for getting in…

“Ordah says he will request a portal opening
for you.”

Darse froze. “He does?”

She held up another slip of paper. “If you
do this task.”

Darse’s eyelids closed, and a swooping rush
of despair crashed through him. He felt powerless. “We can’t do
this!” Darse insisted. “We aren’t capable!”

“What, then, will you do?”

Darse frowned. “Others know now, don’t they?
They know two foreigners are here. And one is…”

She nodded. Her face was strained and
grieved.

They stood in silence, and he clawed and bit
at the decision before him like a cornered beast. He stared into
the greenery in a daze, feeling anguish stretch him thinner than
tissue. Her soft hand reached out and grasped his in a tender
squeeze. He started, but did not withdraw, and pulled his eyes up
to meet hers.

“In saving mine, you will likely save your
own,” she whispered.

The truth of the statement cascaded through
Darse. Somehow, yes, he knew it was truth. Massada was a mystery to
him, but
this
he felt with an eerie assurance, intuition
suddenly blossoming into lucid fact. His heart flailed in protest,
but regardless, he knew it was right.

He longed to scream no. He yearned to fling
her letter in a crumpled heap to her feet, throw Brenol over his
shoulders, and pound the portal open with force. He wanted anything
but to bring Brenol deeper into this mess of Massada.

It is the only way. The only way.

He shuddered. There was no room to refuse,
and he knew it.

Darse nodded. He would bring her princess
back.

King or slave, affluent or impoverished, the choice
for benere is rarely an easy one.

-Genesifin

“I cannot. I cannot,” Brenol muttered,
dodging from the sight of servants. He searched the nurest
connection for the most abandoned sections of the castle and
swerved his feet to follow.

Darse’s strained face hovered in his memory.
The man had barely recounted the news of their imminent departure
before the boy had ran away as if fleeing a fire.

He feverishly paced the castle, soured to
the core. His mind raced with images, each with the same beautiful
girl he had glimpsed on their first day in the castle—
reading in
a corner,
snatching a treat from the kitchen cooks, laughing
with joyous eyes, staring out in gentle silence upon the
countryside.
He drowned anew with the overpowering crash of
Veronia’s affection as each image emerged, panting and reeling
under the intensity of the emotion. It was only too clear who the
child was.

Brenol swept around a corner, but again, he
saw her—
slip of a child cupping a flower in both hands,
shivering in the gusty afternoon, curled within a youth’s
arms—
and this time, the whirl of emotions mixed with his own
was too much. He bent forward and heaved. It was quick, far from
relieving, and stung his nostrils with stomach acid. With a weak
wipe of sleeve to mouth, he left the mess and tottered from the
hall. He longed for some kind of consolation but knew there was
none to be found.

“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered. He
fought the growing roil stirring up in his gut again and gasped for
air while resting his cheek upon the cool, stony wall. The nausea
eased, but his self-loathing did not.

“I’m a horror,” he muttered. “A horror.” He
turned his head so the other cheek might also soak in the cold
surface.
How can I not want to save her?

The girl, so very real in his mind, was
perfect. Her face and glances were innocent; her expressions,
gentle; her eyes, dazzling; her smiles, even and sweet. She was so
young and full of life. He wanted to touch her cheek and stroke her
smooth plaits. Yet in spite of all this, he did not want to rescue
her.

Rescue meant leaving Veronia, leaving the
nurest connection, and likely losing it forever. The visnati had
told him there was only one connection at a time. The days of
multiple nuresti in a terrisdan were no more. While Brenol had
sought to hide from the truth of what his new power was doing to
him, it had come to stand right before him with Darse’s
announcement, and was glaring: he preferred a girl’s death to
losing the connection.

And to see such darkness within himself was
crippling.

His desires tore at the very fabric of who
he thought he was, and his resolve oscillated as he grappled to
find order in it all.

I cannot forget this power… I cannot live
without it.

I feel like I can do anything. I feel so
good with it. That I’m someone.

There’s no living anymore unless I have
it.

Merely pondering the return to ordinary life
was abhorrent, yet the more Brenol longed to stay, the more he
loathed himself.

He had once thought his heart good. But now?
With this despicable churning in him? This groping for power?

His mind was plagued by the all-too simple
question:
Would I really let her die so I can remain a
nurest?

It haunted him.

He saw how easy it would be, how
pleasurable, too.

~

Later that night, Darse and Brenol dined
together. Darse did not remark upon Brenol’s absence, and Brenol
was not anxious to broach the topic. The meal was brought to the
sitting area in Darse’s room, and they ate it without relish.

Why are you silent, Veronia? Why?
Brenol asked.

There was no response.

You never speak anymore,
he thought
with bitterness.

Brenol finally looked up to Darse. “What was
it like talking to the Queen?” he asked softly.

It was the first thing the boy had uttered,
but Darse answered without remark. “Truthfully? As though there’s a
hole in her glass… She’s had so much happen that her emotions are
like a loose wagon wheel—jumping and threatening a crash at every
turn.” He recalled the heap of a woman, her mental strain and near
incoherency, her leaping from tears to laughter in mere seconds.
“But it could also have been the shock of finding her daughter
alive after so long and after so much… For how do you handle losing
a lover and two children?”

“Two?” Brenol’s face pinched. He had fled
before collecting the entire story.

“Ah, well, Deniel wasn’t her son, but he
lived with them for orbits here in Sleockna. Adopted, I think, but
I don’t know the whole of it. Seems like he and Colette were close.
Like siblings.” Darse rubbed his furry chin. Since their arrival in
Massada, his clean face had disappeared behind a silvery beard.

“Deniel,” Brenol repeated before dropping
off into silence. An unusual sensation tickled at his mind, as if
the name itself were an omen. He probed the connection looking for
answers but was only rewarded with a brief image of the young
man—
striding through castle, rough and serious, weather-beaten
and bronze, twenty orbits, smooth brown hair, even features, eyes
as hard as granite.
The eyes were what gave Brenol pause.
Deniel was the same young man he had seen in other images with
Colette, but now he harbored a lethal glance. The determined fury
of those orbs was unquenchable.

Veronia’s rage swept through Brenol. His
hands shook as it drained away, and he inhaled slowly. The fury
from the land had nearly brought him to his knees.

Why? What did he do? Why are you so mad?

Veronia’s eye pressed upon the boy hotly,
but the land held its silence. Brenol stewed with irritation.
Crippled by these stupid feelings and it won’t even
explain.

Darse continued, unaware of Brenol’s
internal storm. He told the youth about Deniel hunting for Colette
and his recent disappearance. “I cannot imagine scouring the world
for someone for eight orbits.”

Nor do I want to,
Brenol thought
crossly, and added aloud, “Why would we suddenly be so much more
capable than everyone else? We know nothing about any of this.” He
tried to ignore the peevish tone escaping his lips. “Nothing.”

Or this place,
Darse thought gravely.
“I guess we try, even if we can’t find anything.”

Brenol sneered. “Ordah seems to think he
knows what we can do.”

Darse practically snorted in disgust. “Ordah
indeed. There is something we certainly agree upon. If he knows so
much maybe he could’ve dealt with this eight orbits ago and before
the deaths of everyone Isvelle loved. He teases us with a portal
opening, but can he even bring it about?” Darse’s eyes narrowed,
and he felt a low growl rumble in his chest. “He treats us like
we’re the town mutts. Sent to fetch, called with the promise of a
scrap, ordered to sit.”

“And,” said Brenol, as he glanced sideways
at the man, “I don’t know why there’s such a rush. We don’t have to
leave
tomorrow.
” He sighed, stood, and strode to the small
pane of glass to peer out upon the courtyard, but darkness
prevented his vision. He blinked and felt his ear pricking alert,
for an odd voice, cadent as poetry, sounded in the room.

“Death will be a close companion before we
are done.”

Darse’s neck snapped up, and his throat
constricted. “Bren?” he asked.

Brenol clamped his mouth shut, suddenly
realizing the voice had issued from his own lips. He quivered and
paled. “I’ve no idea where that came from.”

The youth eyed Darse’s arms clothed in goose
bumps. His own insides were cold and swirling with dread. “Moments
like this are when I don’t like being a nurest. It makes me feel
awful to be a walking mystery…even to myself.”

Darse smiled in spite of the gravity of it
all; Brenol sounded like himself again.
He isn’t entirely
lost,
realized Darse. He reached over and patted him on the
shoulder as he had done so many times before.