Mistress Of Masks (Book 1) (16 page)

He sniffed the wind. “I smell no enemies close by, so suit yourself.” He set his sword within reach and sprawled before the fire. Within minutes he was snoring.

Eydis rubbed her bare arms. How could the barbarian sleep so easily? Perhaps he was sufficiently accustomed to the nearness of danger to put it from his mind. But she could not rid her thoughts of the hunger hounds they had left behind. Or worse, of their gruesome master with his eyeless gaze. They were still out there somewhere in the night. What if they found a way to cross the lake? Or what if the birdmen descended on them again? She had no doubt the Aviads were minions of Rathnakar, but how had he known to send them to Treeveil? Was he somehow watching her across the distance, even now?

Moving nearer the fire, she leaned against a broken column and gazed out into the darkness. She tried to keep her senses alert, but it had been an exhausting day and the warmth of the fire was comfortably lulling. Sleep beckoned. Beneath half-closed eyelids, she caught a glow of white moving among the surrounding trees. Shaking away her drowsiness, she stared harder into the shadows. There it was again. A faint glow, flickering like a pale flame as it weaved around the rocky ruins scattering the hillside. Sometimes the apparition disappeared, masked by a screen of trees or rubble. Then it reappeared, working its way in a circle around the camp.

Eydis didn’t realize she meant to go for a closer look until she found herself standing. Glancing at her sleeping companions, she had a fleeting thought of waking Orrick to tell him where she was going. Strange that he hadn’t heard or smelled any sign of a near presence. Perhaps it was a ghost out there?

Anyway, it was not as if she were going far. Outside the ring of firelight it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The pale apparition paused, seemingly waiting for her, and now its features were more distinct. No longer a shapeless blur of light, it had taken on the form of a woman. One clad in a trailing white shroud with a silvery circlet resting atop her loosely flowing hair. As Eydis drew near, the ghostly woman turned and walked away through the trees.

“Wait!” she called after the retreating figure. “Who are you, and why do you watch us?”

Instead of responding, the apparition shifted and disappeared into nothingness, leaving her alone in the shadows. In the distance the campfire and the safety of Eydis’s companions beckoned. But she wasn’t ready to go back yet. How could she relax even for a moment, now that she realized they were on an island inhabited by a ghost? Or, for all she knew,
many
ghosts. Goose pimples stood up on her arms at the thought. Suddenly every tree trunk looming out of the darkness took on threatening proportions. Every subtle whisper of wind stirring through the tall grass sounded like a ghoulish murmur.

Fighting her unease, she continued in the direction where the apparition had disappeared. On the other side of the trees she found herself amid a ring of stone monoliths. The manmade stones looked as if they might predate even the temple ruins back at camp. At the heart of the ring stood what might once have been a fountain but it was dry now. Despite the fissures down its sides and the wild vines creeping over its edges, the fountain’s ornamentation suggested it had once had significance to whoever constructed it.

“Death nears for one of your party…”

At the sibilant whisper, so soft yet so near, Eydis spun, scanning the surrounding shadows.

“The end of life is as inevitable as its beginning,” continued the whisper. “But all mortals resist this.”

She saw it now. The ghostly figure in white was creeping about behind the obelisks. It kept distant enough not to expose itself but threw its voice to sound as if it were right over her shoulder.

Eydis refused to be intimidated. “Enough of your tricks,” she said, standing still. “Tell me who you are and what you want with us.”

“Is that fear in your voice, Eydis Ironmonger?” hissed the apparition. “Do you weaken so easily when not shielded by your sell-sword?”

Eydis hesitated. How did the ghost know her name? But clearly it did not know everything. She answered, “Our sword is in the hands of a barbarian. Ignorant and violent he may be, but a mercenary he is not.”

“So certain are you? Yet what do you truly know of this Kroadian?”

Eydis followed the apparition’s slow circuit of the ring. “I know he is fated to help save the world. More than that I do not need to know.”

“Other facts do not concern you? Not even the betrayal of his own kin at the battle of Endguard?”

“He denies that charge.”

“All villains protest innocence when it is to their advantage. Do not be too quick to trust the betrayer of blood.”

Eydis narrowed her eyes. “Right now I’m more concerned with you than with threats from within my party. You seem to know a great deal about me and my companions. How is that when I know not even your name?”

She heard rather than saw the ghost’s sardonic smile. “I have been called The White Lady.”

“An apt name, but it is little more. It tells me not who or what you are.”

The white lady drew a little nearer, making her lovely yet haughty features more clearly visible. She said, “I was once a lady of noble birth, until I and my family were betrayed and murdered by the then inhabitants of this island. There is nothing more you need know about me.”

“That doesn’t tell me how you know my name and other details about my companions,” Eydis pointed out.

The white lady lifted a pale shoulder. “I have been watching you since you landed on my shores. This island belongs to me, and power is given me to see the histories of all trespassers who lay foot upon it.”

“You say your power is given. Given by whom?”

“Would you believe it came by the hand of the First Mother?” the white lady asked.

“I would not. The Mother is a giver of light, and in you I sense no light. Your only concerns are for yourself.”

The white lady arched a brow. “A half-wise fool is the blindest kind. You, child, walk as much in ignorance as in knowledge. Tell me, if what you say is true, why have I brought you to this place?”

“You did not. It was the water creatures who carried us here in our boat. I have seen their kind before. I believe they must be of the same species as the green guardians of the sacred pool at Silverwood Grove. This is not the first time their kind has come to my rescue. I do not know why, but they take an interest in me.”

“Your conveyance to my island is not the ‘why’ I referenced,” the white lady answered. “Ask yourself instead why I led you to this ring of stones? To this fountain?”

Eydis eyed the fountain and said, “I see nothing special about it.”

“That is because there is now nothing of significance to this pile of stones. But once the ancient inhabitants of the isle called it the Fountain of Life. They were a primitive people. Superstitious and ignorant in many ways. But they were correct in believing the water of this fount possessed mystical healing properties. If you valued the life of your dying dryad friend, you would bring him some of this water.”

Eydis absorbed the unlikely information, unsure whether to believe anything from this source.

“Perhaps it has escaped your notice, but the fountain is completely dry,” she pointed out.

“Dry for others, yes. But not for you. Dip your hands in and see for yourself.”

Doubtfully Eydis followed her instruction and went to the fountain, leaning over its crumbling edge. Scooping up a fistful of the dry dust layering the bottom, she let it stream through her fingers.

“You see? No water.” The words had barely escaped her lips when she felt a change in the grit. Suddenly, impossibly, it turned moist, transforming into drops of cool clear water trickling from her hand. Amazed, she scooped up more sand, cradling it in her palms and watching it turn to water.

“I don’t understand. How can this be?” she asked.

The white lady came to look over her shoulder. She was close enough now that Eydis could feel the ghostly chill of the air around her.

“For one who holds the life-touch,” the lady hissed, “the impossible becomes possible.”

“Thank you,” Eydis forced herself to say, resisting the urge to flinch away from the ethereal lady. “What you’ve shown me here could save my friend’s life.”

The specter inclined her head in acknowledgement. Then, with the hint of a smile on her pale lips, she faded away to nothingness.

Eydis was alone. She almost called out for the white lady to come back, because she still had many unanswered questions. But now was not the time to ask them. Not while Geveral hovered on the brink of death. She looked around for a means of carrying the water back to camp, but there was nothing. So she ripped the sleeve off her tunic and soaked it in the water, before hurrying with it back to the temple ruins.

There, she found Orrick awake and stalking around the perimeter of the camp, sword in hand. He looked relieved at her approach but only a little. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “Don’t you know I was about to abandon the boy to go looking for you? I thought those water creatures must have slithered into camp and dragged you away.”

“Sorry I left, but it couldn’t be helped,” she said. “I met someone who told me a way to heal Geveral.”

“Met someone? Where?” He scanned the shadows, alert.

“Never mind, I’ll explain later. Right now I need to take care of Geveral.”

She knelt beside the Drycaenian youth. His breathing was uneasy, his skin slick with sweat, and his forehead hot to the touch. When she pressed the wet rag against his neck, he moaned but didn’t wake. Wringing water from the cloth, she let it trickle gently over the bloody wound created by the hunger hound’s fangs, praying the mystical water would do its healing work. She suspected there were a great many areas where the white lady was not to be trusted, and could only hope this was not one of them. But the only way to find out was to wait.

Eydis woke to find the gray light of dawn pouring over the temple ruins. Rubbing a cramped muscle in her neck, she realized she must have fallen asleep slumped against a boulder during her nighttime vigil. Someone had covered her with a cloak. Rising to stretch out her sore muscles, she looked for Geveral. He had been beside her, but now the place where he had lain was empty. That was strange. Where could he have gone in his condition? She looked for Orrick, but the barbarian too was missing. Thinking of her encounter the previous night with the white lady, she feared the worst.

“The Kroadian was awake at first light,” a voice said, startling her.

She followed the sound and spotted Geveral seated atop a tall heap of rubble that might once have been a temple wall. He continued, “The barbarian stalked out of camp, saying something about finding food. If he does discover any, I suspect he’ll keep it all to himself. That’s who you were worrying about, isn’t it?”

Eydis hastily scaled the pile of stones to join him at the top. “Actually, I was concerned about both of you,” she said, settling beside him.

From this vantage point she had a view of the entire north side of the island, all the way down the grassy hill to where they had pulled their boat up onto the muddy shore. In another direction a stand of trees blocked her view of the stone circle where she had been last night.

That reminded her. “It worked!” she said. “The water must have healed you, Geveral.”

“I don’t remember any water,” he said, hesitating. “But something certainly saved me. What little I can recall of last night is a blur of pain and darkness, followed by the sense my life was slipping away. A fog closed in. Then suddenly I awoke, fully restored and feeling as if it had all been a dream. Only this remains to say it was not.”

He peeled back his collar, stiff now with dried blood, to reveal a silver scar down the side of his neck, where last night there had been a gaping wound.

Amazed, Eydis touched the restored flesh. It was smooth now, without the puckering or pinkness usually associated with a newly healed wound. The damage had simply disappeared, leaving in its place only a pale outline of where the hunger hound’s fangs had done their awful damage.

She said, “Whatever the cause of this miracle, I’m glad you came through it. I couldn’t have forgiven myself if you had died as a result of my actions.”

She explained the things he couldn’t remember from the previous night. How they had escaped the hunger hounds and their eyeless master. How the water maidens had ferried them to safety, and how the white lady had guided her to the mystical water that had seemingly brought Geveral back from the brink of the grave.

He listened intently until she concluded with, “I swear it was never my intent to endanger you in this way. As soon as we get off this island I will fully understand if you choose to leave Orrick and me to our quest alone, while you return to your home. I hope that is not the decision you make. But if it is, I won’t prevent you or allow Orrick to do so.”

He appeared to consider the matter, looking out over the scenery below. “Did you know this island was once home to a dryad colony?” he asked, changing the subject. “My people have a legend about it, a cautionary tale for new generations of Drycaenians. It tells how my ancestors became too attached to artificial comforts. They ceased to care for the fauna or to guide the weather. They hewed down trees and did not plant new groves. They hunted with greed, until there was little game left on the island. Eventually they had killed everything of beauty. There was nothing left but the rocks they could not destroy and the buildings they had made of them. That’s when they realized they had ruined the land they were supposed to tend. In their shame and remorse, they then abandoned the island of the lake.”

Eydis looked down on the waving grass and the green trees. “The place does not look spoiled to me.”

“That is because new settlers came,” he said. “Lythnians, of the race of man. They farmed, planted new groves, and returned the land to its former state. Later, legend says they too were driven away. This time not by shame but by ghosts of their own making. After that, the island remained uninhabited.”