The Mountains Rise (27 page)

“Play some more music for me,” said Lyralliantha
,
and Daniel thought he detected a hint of pleasure in her response.

The next day Lyralliantha was true to her promise. As soon as the sun had arisen
she took Daniel on a tour of the Illeniel Grove, or at least its boundaries.

It turned out that the border of what Daniel had thought of as the ‘deep woods’, where
it approached the valley he called home, was the western most edge of her grove.
From there it extended several miles to the north and two miles to the south. The
eastern edge bordered the Prathion Grove and was only five miles from the western
edge of the Illeniel Grove.

“Your grove is huge,” observed Daniel.

Lyralliantha looked down for a moment, “Only from your perspective, Tyrion. The other
groves are much larger.”

Daniel remembered his flight with Thillmarius. The world had stretched out beneath
them for hundreds of miles in every direction, and from what the She’Har had said
,
it went on for countless miles beyond the horizon. Compared to that the Illeniel
Grove
was
small.

“How many groves are there?” he asked her suddenly.

“Five,” she replied.

“Do the Illeniel She’Har
have more groves elsewhere?”

“This is all that is left of us. After we had claimed this world
,
and once we had finished with your people
,
the five groves spread and began to colonize
the fertile regions. Things were balanced in the beginning, but once the shuthsi
system replaced the old system we stopped growing. The other four groves gradually
claimed everything.”

“Because you wouldn’t keep slaves?” he asked, to clarify.

“Yes,” agreed Lyralliantha. “Before that time, the Illeniels were the most prosperous,
for our children had the greatest success in the arena, but once we were here things
changed. The world was empty, and the elders felt it should be filled quickly. Allowing
the children to fight would slow our expansion. Using baratti to fight in their place
allowed them to expand more quickly. Naturally it was considered unfair for Illeniel
children to fight against baratti, so we withdrew completely.”

So her grove willingly gave up their ability to expand simply because they felt that
slavery was wrong.

“Did the Illeniels gain shuthsi when I was fighting in the arena?” he asked, suddenly
curious.

She nodded, “Yes, for the first time since the system was started. But the elders
were not pleased, for they felt that I brought shame upon our grove by participating
in the cruelty.”

“How many elders are there?”

“I do not know,” she replied, furrowing her brow. After a minute she added, “The
number is somewhere near twenty-five-thousand—for the Illeniel Grove.”

Daniel was astounded, for he had seen no more than a few hundred She’Har with Lyralliantha’s
coloration. “How can there be so many?”

She gestured, extending her arm to point at the nearest tree and then sweeping it
slowly around to indicate all of them. “Can you count them all?”

He knew that they considered the trees to be their adult form, but since they couldn’t
talk
,
Daniel had assumed they were passive regarding the daily doings of the Illeniel Grove.
“The trees? Those are your elders? But they can’t talk,” he stated, somewhat confused.

Her lips quirked into a half smile, “They talk to us, Tyrion
, and they speak to each other. They decide all the important matters. Can’t you
feel their presence?”

He had often felt as though the trees were watching him, but he had just assumed it
was the paranoia produced from his years living in Ellentrea. “I feel something,”
he told her, closing his eyes. The aythar the trees held was ponderous and massive,
but it moved slowly. It gave the impression of awareness without the quick movement
he associated with sentient minds. Beneath it all he could feel the rhythmic beat
of a deeper existence. “I can feel the trees, but they move too slow to be awake—and
there’s something else, like a heartbeat.”

“They move slowly, yes, but they are awake. Their conversations take a long time.
The lore-wardens handle matters that require immediate action. I am not certain what
this heartbeat you speak of is, however,” she answered.

“What is a lore-warden, exactly?”
asked
Daniel, putting aside the question of the heartbeat. He had heard Thillmarius refer
to the title once before, but he didn’t really know what it meant.

“As you know, we are created with the knowledge we require already within us, but
there is more. Each tree will produce a fruit we call the ‘loshti’. The loshti is
a repository of knowledge. It contains all the memories and wisdom that the tree
has gained, both during its childhood and during its adulthood. The child
who
eats the
loshti is known as a lore-warden, and depending upon the tree
who
gave them the loshti, their knowledge may stretch back over many generations.”

“Do all of you become lore-wardens before becoming trees?”

“No,” Lyralliantha said, shaking her head. “When we came here there were fewer than
twenty Illeniel lore-wardens, and the number of lore-wardens for the other groves
was even smaller. After that the groves expanded rapidly, so most of the new adults
were from new seeds, children
who
had never been given the loshti. Now our growth is limited to replacement when one
of the great trees dies.”

“So most of the loshti now come from trees
who
don’t have a long history,” said Daniel.

“Exactly, and our elders live long lives. They do not die of age
,
and we are able to manage any disease that might occur,” she added.

“If all the usable land is occupied
,
and the elders don’t die, how
do the young
find a place to become an adult?” wondered Daniel.

“Since the land was filled, over five thousand years ago, there have been only
thirty-three
elder deaths.
A few were from terrible windstorms, but most were caused by an upheaval of the earth.
The children today will have to wait a long time.” Lyralliantha’s face never changed
as she spoke
,
and even her aura was still. As usual her emotions were as placid as her exterior
indicated.

“How long do you live before…,” Daniel stopped, thinking the question might be a touchy
one.

Lyralliantha gazed calmly at him, “Before what?”

Her serene expression made up his mind for him. It would be more unusual if he found
a topic that
did
upset her. He went on, “Before you die? If you don’t get a chance to become an adult,
will you grow old?”

“The seed within helps to maintain our animal bodies,” she replied. “We do not age
as a human would. Most of the children you have met are already hundreds of years
in age
.

His parents had taught him that it was a bad question to ask, but Daniel was struck
by the strangeness of his situation.
Could she be that old? She looks no older than me.
His features twitched
,
but he kept his lips closed. He opened his mouth again but stopped, not knowing
how to proceed.

“You wish to know my age?” she queried, granting him another half-smile.

He nodded.

“I am nine now.”

His brows knotted in consternation.
That would make her around four when I first met her. What the hell?

“I was created to replace one lost in an accident. We regulate the number of our
children as carefully as we do the number of our adults,” she said, misunderstanding
his question.

“
You certainly don’t look nine
,” he finally said, unable to contain his amazement.

“I’ve told you before, we are born with all the knowledge and abilities we will require.
That includes our bodies, we are full formed when the mother trees release us,” she
explained. Then she added, “Before you ask, yes, I am the youngest
at present
. Among the Illeniels there are no children currently younger than at least a century
. I am not sure about the other groves.”

I came to the forest to die
,
and instead I ran into the youngest member of an impossibly old race. She was probably
the only one young enough to make the mistake of taking a wild human as a ‘pet’.
Someone else might have thought themselves lucky, but to Daniel it seemed like the
pream
ble to an unfortunate destiny. Instead he remembered the loneliness he had suffered,
punctuated by Thillmarius’ terrible punishments.
If I had known what lay before me
,
I would have forced her to kill me then.

Now though, he wasn’t so sure. Life with Lyralliantha wasn’t anything like his life
in Ellentrea had been. He had conversation as well as music
,
and the food was steadily improving.

“We’ve spent the day traveling
,
and you still haven’t seen all of the border yet,” she reminded him.

“Horses might have improved our time.”

“Time is one thing I have in great supply,” Lyralliantha said plainly, but Daniel
spotted a brief flash of something that in a human he might have labeled melancholy.

“You are too young to seem so bored,” he returned.

“Even nine years can seem a burden when little changes,” she supplied.

Perhaps there’s a downside to being born knowledgeable. Half the fun of youth is
learning,
he thought to himself.

“I am here now,” observed Daniel.

“Your music has been a balm for my spirit. Will you play for me again this evening?”
It was the same question she asked every day.

He wondered why
she asked. It wasn’t as if he c
ould refuse. He was completely in her power. Daniel wondered if she was as aware
of that fact as he was. Perhaps she
was able to forget
.

***

Later, after they had fed themselves and returned to the platform that Daniel had
begun to think of as ‘his’, he played for her again.
Once he had finished the first song Lyralliantha spoke up.

“Will you play the song from your vision again? The one you played the day that wom—Amarah
died,” she asked. It was a testament to her diligence that she remembered to call
the unnamed servant by her name. It had been a sore topic for Daniel
for
a few of their early conversations. She used it now to avoid distressing him, even
though death held little meaning for her.

“Dana’s Lament?” he clarified, taking no offense at her blunt affect. He had learned
that while Lyrallian
tha was exceptionally sensitive
for one of the She’Har, she was still unable to comprehend grief fully.

“I think that is what you named it before.”

Once again he was amazed at her
clearly spoken Barion. While his understanding of Erollith was progressing quickly,
his ability to speak it was advancing more slowly. Byovar complimented him, but he
could tell the She’Har thought he should be learning faster.

“I don’t like to play it very often,” he admitted.

“Why not?”

“It makes me sad.”

Lyralliantha cocked her head sideways slightly, reminding Daniel of his dog, Blue,
when he was curious. “Does it make you remember your family?”

Family was somethin
g they had spoken of previously;
although Daniel had despaired of her ever understanding why he would have such a
powerful attachment to other people. “That is part of it, but it also reminds me
of the other things I’ve lost.” A memory of green eyes made him blink.

“Will you play it?” she asked, unperturbed by his evident sadness.

“It makes it worse when you listen with me,” he told her.

“Why?”

Daniel decided to be brutally honest with her. “Music like that is meant to allow
people to share sorrow, to gain strength and support from the experience. When you
listen to it with me, I’m reminded of how alone I am, because you don’t understand
the
sadness and loss within the song.”

If his words hurt her, it didn’t show. As with almost everything, she simply stared
at him thoughtfully. Eventually she spoke again, “I feel something when you play
it, but I don’t understand. Our bodies are like yours—we can feel, but we don’t have
the same experiences that you do. We do not have families.”

“There’s no way to bridge that gap,” said Daniel.

She had moved closer and now her blue eyes were staring intently at him from no more
than a foot away. “Your music already has. I can feel it. I think I could understand,
a little, if you would show me.” She held her hands up, as if she wanted to place
them on his head.

Daniel realized he was holding his breath. Her nearness was causing him to react
in uncomfortable ways and he was glad that he had clothes now. “Stand behind me then,
so I have room for my cittern,” he said, surrendering to her wish.

He took a seat and she stood behind him, her hands
lightly touching his temples. A moment later he felt the light touch of her mind
on his
,
and he knew that she could see and feel what he was experiencing. He tightened his
fingers against the frets and began strumming with his other hand, letting the chords
flow from one to the next as the melody took hold of him.

He hadn’t intended to sing, but the words were running through his head
,
and he let them carry him along, striving with his imperfect voice to give them life.
They told the story of Dana, a quiet country maid who fell in love with a traveling
soldier named Byron. Their happiness was short
,
however, as Byron was soon called away to war. The last half of the song was a sad
tribute to Dana’s steadfast love as she waited for her lover’s return.

The words rolled by, but in Daniel’s mind he was seeing a different vision. Rather
than Dana and Byron, his heart was filled with red hair and green eyes. Days on the
hillside, watching his father’s sheep and occasionally catching
a
glimpse of Kate. He remembered her kiss, and her tears, the pain in her eyes when
he told her that he didn’t love her. The awe he had felt when he realized that she
might forgive him for everything, might love him despite his flaws and mistakes, filled
his heart again. Catherine Sayer was an ache that made his chest feel hollow, a pain
that never quite disappeared
, despite five years of blood and pain.

He had learned to love again, when he discovered kindness in Ellentrea. Amarah had
given him some comfort, loving him without understanding the word. She had been a
gift, one that had helped him survive. Her mind had been almost childlike in its
simplicity, but he had cherished her, the one bright thing in a violent existence.

Now she was gone, and Daniel was left alone once more, longing for something to fill
the void. In his heart
,
Kate was sitting on the bench on her mother’s porch, staring into the empty night,
waiting for her lover to come home.

The song ended
,
and Daniel became aware of himself again. His chest felt heavy
,
and a coolness on his cheeks told him that tears had recently found their way down
them. Lyralliantha stood behind him, quiet, her hands on his shoulders now.
His magesight could see her shoulders moving
,
and he felt the motion being transferred through the light touch of her arms.

Is she crying?

Glancing up and over his shoulders he saw red-rimmed eyes brimming with tears. She
sobbed silently, unable to stop herself and without a shred of self-consciousness.

He put the cittern to one side and stood, turning to face her. “It’s alright,” he
told her.

“How can you feel all of this?” she asked, still weeping. “Doesn’t it make you want
to die?” The expression on her face reminded him of a child, one
who
had fallen for the first time and was learning the truth of pain.

“Sometimes,” he admitted, moving closer and putting his arms around her. “That’s
why we do this.”

She let him embrace her, although she didn’t return the gesture, keeping her arms
folded across her own chest. Lyralliantha couldn’t fully comprehend her emotions
yet, nor did she know how to comfort someone else.

Daniel could see her relaxing though, the tension leaving her shoulders as she finally
stopped weeping. Fascinated by her proximity, he stroked her strange silver hair,
feeling its softness under his palms.
She had a pleasant scent, one that reminded him of the trees and growing things.
Without thinking
,
he began to stroke her aura, trying to awaken the same attraction in her that he
felt himself.

With his magesight he saw her aura change, lighting up with the distinctive patterns
that indicated arousal, before shifting suddenly to anger. Lyralliantha pushed him
back.

“No, baratt!” she declared, glaring at him with an icy ferocity.

He released her, confused by her sudden reversal. “What?”

“I have much to learn, baratt, but you also must learn some things,” she said angrily.
Striding quickly away
,
she left the platform and was gone.

Daniel watched her with his magesight, wondering whether she was retiring for the
evening. She didn’t stop at he
r own sleeping platform however;
Lyralliantha kept moving until she had left the tree entirely
,
and she didn’t stop until she was outside of the range of his senses.

Why is she so mad?
He wondered.