The Lost Years (26 page)

T’eilean’s expression became serious again. “These are dangerous times to travel in Fincayra. You must be either very brave or very foolish.”

I nodded. “Time will tell which we are. But may I ask about you? If it’s dangerous to travel here, it must be more so to live here.”

“Too true.” T’eilean beckoned to Garlatha to join him. “But where could we go? My wife and I have lived here together for sixty-eight years. Our roots are deep, as deep as these trees.” With a wave at their unadorned home, he added, “Besides, we have no treasure.”

“Not that could be stolen, that is.” Garlatha took his arm, smiling at him. “Our treasure is too big for any chest, and more precious than any jewels.”

T’eilean nodded. “You are right, my lady.” Leaning toward me, he grinned mischievously. “She is always right. Even when she is wrong.”

Garlatha kicked him hard in the shin.

“
Owww
,” he howled, rubbing the spot. “After sixty-eight years, you should have learned some manners!”

“After sixty-eight years, I have learned to see right through you.” Garlatha looked at him full in the face. Slowly, she grinned. “Yet, somehow, I still like what I see.”

The old man’s dark eyes glittered. “Come now, what of our guests? Can we offer you a place to sit? Anything to eat?”

I shook my head. “We have no time for sitting, I’m afraid.” I pointed toward the spiral-shaped fruits dangling from the branch. “I would take one of those, though. I had that kind once before and it was wonderful.”

T’eilean reached up and, with surprising dexterity, plucked one of the fruits with his large, wrinkled hand. As he gave it to me, he said, “You may certainly have this, but you have not had its kind, the larkon, before.”

Puzzled, I shook my head.

“These grow nowhere else in Fincayra,” explained the gardener, his voice solemn. “Years ago, long before you were born, trees bearing them dotted the hills east of the River Unceasing. But they have succumbed to the Blight that has afflicted the rest of our land. All but this one.”

I took a bite of the fruit. The flavor like purple sunshine burst inside my mouth. “There is one other place this fruit still grows, and there I have eaten it before.”

In unison, T’eilean and Garlatha asked, “Where?”

“In Druma Wood, at the shomorra tree.”

“The shomorra?” sputtered Garlatha. “You have truly been there, to the rarest of trees?”

“A friend who knows it well took me there.”

T’eilean stroked his wispy beard. “If that is true, you have a remarkable friend.”

My face tightened. “I do.”

A slight breeze stirred the branch above me, rustling the living leaves. I listened for a moment. I felt like a man, deprived of water for days, who finally heard the sound of a burbling stream. Suddenly, Shim reached up and yanked the spiral fruit from my hand. Before I could protest, he took two large bites.

I glared at him. “Don’t you know how to ask?”

“
Mmmppff
,” said the little giant through a mouthful of fruit.

Garlatha’s eyes shone with amusement. Turning to her husband, she said, “It appears that I am not the only one without manners.”

“You are right,” he answered. Hobbling a few steps away, he added with equal amusement, “As always.”

Garlatha grinned. Her strong arm reached up to the branch, picked another spiral fruit, and handed it to me. “Here. You can start again.”

“You are most generous, especially if this is the last tree of this kind east of the Druma.” I sniffed the larkon’s zesty fragrance, then took a bite. Once again, my tongue exploded with sunny flavor. Savoring the taste, I asked, “How has your garden survived so well in the midst of this Blight? It’s a miracle.”

The couple traded glances.

T’eilean’s face hardened. “It is no more of a miracle than all of these lands once were. But our wicked king has changed all that.”

“It has broken our hearts to watch,” said Garlatha, her voice cracking.

“Stangmar’s Shroud blocks out the sun,” continued the old man. “More with each passing month. For as the Shrouded Castle grows in power, the sky grows ever darker. Meanwhile, his armies have sown death across the land. Whole villages have been destroyed. People have fled to the mountains far to the west, or left Fincayra altogether. A vast forest, as remarkable as Druma Wood, once grew on those hills to the east. No more! What trees have not been slaughtered or burned have retreated into slumber, never to speak again. Here on the plains, what soil has not been soaked with blood has taken on its very color. And the Flowering Harp, that could perhaps coax the land back to life, has been stolen from us.”

He looked down at his weathered hands. “I carried the Harp only once, when I was just a boy. But after all these years, I still cannot forget the feel of its strings. Nor the thrill of its melody.”

He grimaced. “All that and more is lost.” He motioned toward the cleft in the hill behind the hut. “See our once joyous spring! Hardly a trickle. As the land has withered, so has the water that nourished it. Half of my day I now spend hauling water from afar.”

Garlatha took his hand. “As I spend half of mine searching the dry prairie for seeds that still may be revived.”

Awkwardly, Shim offered to her the remains of his fruit. “I is sorry for you.”

Garlatha patted his unruly head. “Keep the fruit now. And do not feel sorry for us. We are far more fortunate than most.”

“That we are,” agreed her husband. “We have been granted a long life together, and a chance to grow a few trees. That is all anyone could ask for.” He glanced at her. “That and our one remaining wish, that one day we might die together.”

“Like Baucis and Philemon,” I observed.

“Who?”

“Baucis and Philemon. They are characters in a story from the Greeks, a story I learned from . . . my mother, long ago. They had but one wish, to die together. And in the end the gods turned them into a pair of trees whose leafy branches would wrap around each other for all time.”

“How beautiful,” Garlatha sighed, looking at her husband.

T’eilean said nothing, though he studied me closely.

“But you have not told me,” I continued, “how your garden has survived in this terrible time.”

T’eilean released Garlatha’s hand and opened his sinewy arms to the greenery, the roots, the blossoms surrounding them. “We have loved our garden, that is all.”

I nodded, thinking how wondrous this region must have been before the Blight. If the garden where Shim and I now stood was only a small sampling of its riches, the landscape would have been as beautiful—though not as wild and mysterious—as the Druma itself. The kind of place where I would have felt alive. And free. And possibly even at home.

Garlatha observed us worriedly. “Are you certain you cannot rest here for a while?”

“No. We cannot.”

“Then you must be extremely careful,” warned T’eilean. “Goblins are everywhere these days. Only yesterday, at sunset, when I was coming back with water, I saw a pair of them. They were dragging away a helpless girl.”

My heart stopped. “A girl? What did she look like?”

The white-bearded man looked pained. “I could not get very close, or they would have seen me. Yet, while I watched, part of me wanted to attack them with all my strength.”

“I am glad you did not,” declared his wife.

T’eilean pointed at me. “The girl was about your age. Long, curly brown hair. And she wore a suit that seemed to be made of woven vines.”

Shim and I gasped.

“Rhia,” I whispered hoarsely. “Where were they going?”

“There can be no doubt,” the old man answered dismally. “They were traveling east. And since the girl was alive at all, she must be someone Stangmar wants to deal with personally.”

Garlatha moaned. “I cannot bear the thought of a young girl at that terrible castle.”

I felt for the dagger in my satchel. “We must go now.”

T’eilean extended his hand to me, clasping my own with unexpected firmness. “I do not know who you are, young man, nor where you are going. But I suspect that, like one of our seeds, you hold much more within than you show without.”

Garlatha touched Shim’s head again. “The same, I think, could be said for this little fellow.”

I did not reply, although I wondered whether they would have spoken so kindly to us if they had known us better. Even so, as I crossed over the crumbling wall, I found myself hoping that I might one day see them again. I turned to wave to the elderly couple. They waved back, then resumed their work.

I noticed that the Galator felt warm against my chest. Peeking under my tunic, I saw that its jeweled center was glowing ever so slightly. And I knew that Cairpré’s theory about the Galator was true.

31:
T
HEN
C
AME A
S
CREAM

For several hours, we trekked toward the notch in the ridge, my staff rhythmically punching the dry soil and dead grass. A cold wind out of the Dark Hills blew down on us. Its bitter gusts slapped our faces. Despite the wind, Shim did his best to stay by my side. Even so, I had to stop several times to help him through some thorny bracken or up a steep pitch.

As the land sloped increasingly upward, the wind blew ever more fiercely. Soon it smacked with such piercing cold that my hand holding my staff no longer pulsed with pain, but started to go numb. It felt as wooden as the staff itself. Flying bits of ice began to whip against us. I lifted my free arm to protect my cheeks and sightless eyes.

The bits of ice turned into needles, then shards, then daggers. As the icy blades rained down on us, Shim, who had resisted complaining since leaving the garden, whined piteously. But I could only hear him in the lulls between gusts, for the howling of the wind grew fiercer.

Although it remained light enough for my second sight to help, the swirling ice and blowing dirt confused my sense of direction. Suddenly I stumbled against a low, flat outcropping of some sort. With a cry, I crumpled to the ground, dropping my staff.

Shivering, I crawled over to the outcropping, hoping to use it as a slight shelter against the storm. Shim tucked himself into the folds of my tunic. We sat there, our teeth chattering from the cold, for minutes that seemed like weeks.

In time, the ice storm abated. The howling wind hurled itself at us a few last times, then finally retreated. Although the air seemed no warmer, our bodies slowly revived. I opened and closed my hands, which made my palms and fingertips sting. Hesitantly, Shim poked his head out of my tunic, his wild hair embedded with icicles.

All at once, I realized that the outcropping that had partially shielded us was nothing more than an immense tree stump. All around us, thousands of such stumps littered the hills, separated by a vast web of eroded gullies. Though frosted with a glaze of ice, the stumps did not sparkle or gleam. They merely sat there, as lifeless as burial mounds.

In a flash, I understood. This was all that remained of the vast forest that T’eilean had described.
Stangmar’s armies have sown death across the land.
The old man’s words lifted like ghosts out of the rotting stumps, the bloodred soil, the broken hills.

Shim and I looked at each other. Without a word, we stood up on the frosted ground. I picked up my staff, knocking a chunk of ice off the top. Then I located the notch again, stepped over the brittle remains of a branch, and started up the slippery terrain. Shim scrambled to stay with me, muttering under his breath.

As the day wore on, we continued to climb, over hills scarred with countless stumps and dry streambeds. All the while, the sky grew darker. Soon the notch disappeared, swallowed in the deepening darkness. I could only trust my memory of where I had last glimpsed its two sharp knobs, though that memory itself was fading with the light.

Slowly, we gained elevation. Despite the dim light, I detected a few thin trees rising amidst the stumps and dead branches. Their twisted forms resembled people writhing in pain. Seeing one tree wearing the bark of a beech, I approached it. Laying my hand on the trunk, I made the swishing, rustling sound that Rhia had taught me in Druma Wood.

The tree did not respond.

I tried again. This time, as I made the swishes, I imagined the living, breathing presence of a healthy tree before me. The powerful roots thrusting into the soil. The arching branches lifting toward the sky. The deep-throated song rising through the trunk, thrilling each and every leaf.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I thought I could sense the barest beginnings of a quiver in the uppermost branches. Yet if they had actually moved, they quickly fell still again.

Giving up, I trudged on. Shim huffed at my heels. As we climbed the rising slope, the ground grew more rocky. With each passing minute, the light dimmed further. The sky blackened, while the stumps and rocks around us melted into shadows.

Although my second sight was swiftly fading, I fought to see whatever I still could. And with all my concentration, I listened. I knew that any movement, no matter how slight, could provide our only warning of attack. As I tried to avoid tripping on rocks and snapping dead branches, my steps grew less certain.

Ahead, I discerned a barely visible gap, where twin knobs of dark rock lifted into the still darker sky. Might it be the notch? I edged closer, as quietly as I could.

Abruptly, I stopped. I stood as still as one of the twisted trees, listening.

Shim crept to my side. “You hears something?”

“Not sure,” I whispered. “I thought I did, somewhere ahead of us.”

Minutes passed. I heard no sound apart from our breathing and the thumping of my own heart.

Eventually, I touched the little giant’s arm. “Let’s go,” I whispered. “But keep quiet. Goblins are near.”

“
Oooh
,” moaned Shim. “I is scared. Certainly, definitely, abs—”

“Quiet!”

Out of the shadows ahead of us came a raspy cry and a sudden pounding of feet. Torches flared, searing the darkness.

“Goblins!”

Across the rocky ridge we fled. Dead branches snapped under our feet. Thorns ripped at our shins. I could hear, just behind, the heaving of the goblins’ chests, the clanking of their armor, the sputtering of their torches.