Wizard of the Grove (7 page)

Milthra saw that her son would make a fine king. His heart sang with courage and pride and his eyes were filled with hope. He might stumble and fall, but he would try, and no mother could ask more. She had no regrets.

The people in the Square saw only the Lady of the Grove and the
young man she claimed as her son, but it was enough. The unworldliness of their future king turned from a thing to be feared to one to be treasured. Not one of them realized what Milthra had done in leaving the Grove.

“Mother,” Rael's voice grew heavy with a new anguish, “you've left your tree.”

“I have left my tree.” She touched his cheek softly. “How could I live when my love died? My sisters sleep and someday a child of your children's children will wake them, but my day is done.”

She kissed him and turned to the king.

Raen looked up at her with such a mixture of longing and pain that those in the crowd who saw it, wept.

“Why have you come?” he cried.

“You would not come to me, beloved, so I have come to you.”

“Then you will die.”

“Yes. But what is my life without you?” She tried a smile, but it faltered and the brilliant green of her eyes dimmed for an instant as they filled and overflowed. Her hands were caught in his, fingers too tightly woven to be parted, so she let the tears drop where they would.

They fell almost slowly, taking form and beauty in the air, and then lay shimmering like jewels on his breast. Instead of drying in the sunlight, they caught it, bound it, and gave it back. Their light grew and grew until everyone save Raen and Milthra covered their eyes. Even Rael stepped back and shielded himself from the glory.

When eyes could see again, an old and dying king no longer lay on the dais. In his place was a young man with hair of jet and smooth golden skin over corded muscle.

“The king,” sighed the crowd. “His youth has returned.”

Rael's eyes widened, joy beginning to surface, but Milthra shook her head.

“It is an appearance only, my child,” she said. “Death is the true son of the Mother and not even I can stop him.” And then she looked beyond Rael, to the young man who stood in his shadow. The young man that only she, of all the hundreds in the Square, could see.

Under the weight of her regard, Lord Death bowed his head and when he raised it again said softly: “I would spare you both if my nature allowed it, Eldest.”

Raen looked down at his body and raised his hands to his face.

“It's true!” His voice throbbed with passion. “I'm a man again. I am as I was in my prime!” He held out his arms and Milthra lay down beside him, her head pillowed on his chest.

“As you always were to me, beloved, and as you always will be now.”

He kissed her once, softly, and then together they died.

The silence was so complete, the crowd so quiet and still, that the sunlight bathing the bodies in golden luminescence could almost be heard. From the distance, from the forest, came the sound of thunder.

Belkar stepped forward and three times opened his mouth to speak. Finally, his voice got past his grief and filled the Square.

“The king is dead!”

And then he dropped on one knee before the tall young man with eyes the green of new spring leaves.

“Long live the king!”

*   *   *

Rael buried his mother and father in the Sacred Grove under the remains of his mother's tree. It had been hit by lightning and then consumed by fire until only a charred stump remained. Not one of the other trees, or even so much as a blade of grass, had been touched.

“This stump shall be your headstone,” he said softly, patting the last bit of earth into place. “And I will see that none disturb your rest.”

“
I
won't cry for them” he had told Belkar, “for they're together at last and even in death that is no cause for grief.”

As the young king left the Grove, he thought he heard women's voices, lamenting, soft with sorrow, but when he turned, he saw only the wind moving through the circle of trees and leaves falling to cover the grave.

R
ael joined with the Duke of Belkar's blue-eyed daughter and their years together were filled with love and laughter and children. He never found the common touch that had so endeared his father to the people, but he ruled well and was always after remembered as just.

For all the years of Rael's reign, Doan, the Captain of the Elite, stood by his side. His unaging presence became a part of the king: two arms, two legs, and the captain. And when he buried his sword in Rael's grave and vanished from mortal lands, that too was accepted with no surprise. It could not be imagined he would serve another.

The death of the Eldest became the subject of a thousand songs and in her honor, or perhaps to save her sisters from a like fate, Rael, as his first act as Lord of Ardhan, forbade all mortals entry to the Grove, swearing those who knew its direction to oaths of secrecy. Over forty years later, when his son took the throne, time had erased the reality of both the Lady and the circle of silver birch and left only the songs.

*   *   *

The dwarf stepped back from the sapling and nodded once. “Just like you said.”

The great black centaur that stood beside him returned the nod, although both kept their eyes on the tiny tree. Around them, the Sacred Grove was silent and still. No leaf rustled, for no breeze dared to intrude.

“Can They hope to succeed?” the centaur asked at last.

Doan shrugged. “I don't see why not. This,” he waved a hand about
the Grove, “is the oldest magic in the world and They've woven themselves into it. Sacrificed Themselves to do it. They've succeeded, C'Tal, that tree holds a life as real as any in this place. But after . . .”

“So much rests on the Mother's youngest children.” C'Tal folded his arms across his massive chest, the black beard flowing like silk over them. “And the Mother's youngest children have never been strong.”

“Strong enough to begin this mess,” Doan snorted. His gaze dropped to the lichen covered mound the young birch grew from, all that remained of Milthra's tree. “Strong enough to draw out the Eldest and take her from us.”

“True,” murmured the centaur and the trees around them stirred and moaned. “But you must never forget, she chose her path.”

“Forget!” Doan whirled and his eyes blazed red, not with power but pain. “As if I could!” He turned again to the sapling. “I could end this, here and now.” He grabbed a tender leaf and ripped it free. The small tree shuddered. “They've risked it all on this one toss, and if I destroy Their vessel it's over.”

“Perhaps for us as well.”

Doan's arched eyebrows invited C'Tal to continue.

“He has no checks on his power this time. Who is to say when he is done with the mortals he will not turn at last to the Elder Races?”

“So
that's
why you finally stuck your noses in.” Doan's laugh was bitter. “Fear.”

“Unlike other races, we do not become involved in that which does not concern the centaurs.” C'Tal's voice remained calm, but the points of his ears lay back against his head and for an instant great slabs of teeth showed startlingly white against the black of his beard. “Nor, given the evidence, is it unreasonable for us to fear what he may do and wish to stop him.”

Doan looked thoughtful. He rubbed another leaf between thumb and forefinger, but this time the action was almost a caress. “I could end it now,” he murmured, his voice unusually gentle.

“But you will not.” A huge black hand reached down and engulfed the dwarf's shoulder.

“No.” He pulled himself out of the other's grasp and stood flexing the shoulder the centaur had held. “And you needn't snap bones to convince me either,” he added peevishly. “For the little of her that's woven here and greater part of her yet to come, I'll let Them try to right the wrong Their brothers did.”

“You must do more than that.” C'Tal ignored both glare and clenched fists and continued. “As you infer, They cannot protect themselves now; if you can destroy Them, so too could another. Until the seed is sown, They must have a protector.”

“Go on.” Doan's voice was the rasp of moving rock.

C'Tal looked surprised. “You have been protector once before.”

“And I don't choose to be again. I am needed in the caverns.”

“Your brothers can guard what the caverns hold. You are needed here.”

“No.” A muscle jumped in his cheek; the Lady lost to love, her son to Mortal time and he could protect them from neither. “Do it yourself.” Moving jerkily, stamping indentations into the velvet grass, Doan pushed past the centaur and out of the Grove.

C'Tal stood quietly, an ebony monument, framed by green and gold. He did not appear distressed by the refusal of his chosen guardian. He merely waited.

“All right.” The pain was safely masked by irritation. “But only until the seed is sown. I've raised one child and I don't care to repeat it.”

“Until the seed is sown,” C'Tal agreed as Doan stomped back and stood snarling down at the tree. “Then we will return to the mortals' ranges . . .”

“Big of you,” Doan interjected sarcastically.

“. . . and as we did with the others, we will instruct the child.”

“Yeah? Well, get it right this time.”

It was C'Tal's turn to glare, but all he said was: “We shall.”

“If there is a child.”

“You think the Eldest's line will not be able to accomplish what they must to fulfill the prophecy?”

The dwarf threw his hands in the air, then, catching sight of C'Tal's
face, he closed his mouth on the cutting remark that had risen to his tongue. The centaur was truly worried. “You want my opinion?”

“Yes.”

Doan remembered. He'd been standing in the Square, with the rest of the Elite when Milthra had given herself to Death so many years before. He would never, for the eternity he might yet live, forget the look on her face.

“The Mother gave each of the Elders one role to play in the lives of her youngest.”

“She did,” agreed C'Tal.

“Dwarves guard. Centaurs teach. But the Eldest . . .”

The sapling's roots were deep in the remains of Milthra's tree, deep in the earth where Milthra and her beloved had been returned to the arms of the Mother.

“. . . but the Eldest loved. And the Youngest were strong enough to bear that. In my opinion They have not sacrificed in vain. The weapon will be forged. There will be a chance to defeat the ancient enemy and maybe, just maybe, we'll have peace for a time.”

The centaur sighed and once again the great hand closed on the dwarf's shoulder.

“Thank you,” said C'Tal, and almost the trees around echoed him. Then, with the uncanny speed of his kind, the centaur was gone.

For a moment, Doan stood quietly, looking down at the miniature silver birch, considering the life within it. The moment passed, his face fell back into its accustomed scowl, and he kicked at a nodding buttercup.

“Seeds, bah! They need a gardener not a guardian.”

“T
ayer, we're lost. We'll never find our way back.”

“Oh, do be quiet, Hanna. I'm trying to think.”

“But what about bandits? We could be killed. Or worse!” The girl's voice rose to a piercing wail.

“Hanna!” Tayer turned in her saddle and glared at her cousin. “There are no bandits in the Lady's Wood. And if you'll just be quiet for a moment, we may be able to hear the horns and find our way back to the hunt.”

Hanna sniffed but stopped wailing. All her life she'd followed the older, stronger-willed girl and now habit conquered fear.

“If we could only see the sun,” Tayer mused, standing in her stirrups and squinting up into the thick summer foliage, “at least then we'd know which way we were heading.” But the sky was overcast and what showed through the leaves was a uniform gray.

“It'll probably rain.”

“Oh, Hanna!” Tayer's laugh lightened the wood's darkness for a moment, and it almost seemed the birds fell silent to hear. Songs without number had been written about the laugh of the Princess of Ardhan. Every bard in the kingdom, and not a few from outside, had tried to immortalize the sound. They'd never quite managed it. As had been said more than once, the sound, although beautiful beyond compare, was nothing really without the princess. Strands of gold wove through the thick chestnut of her hair, flecks of gold brightened the soft brown of her eyes, and a sprinkle of gold danced across the cream of her
cheeks. She was the youngest of the three children of the king, the only daughter, and the image of her dead mother. The king counted her amongst the treasures of his kingdom.

Hanna's pale, delicate beauty had always been overshadowed by her cousin's—what chance had a violet against a rose, even one just barely budded—but she appeared content living in the light of reflected glory.

The four generations since the death of Milthra and Raen had wiped out all overt physical resemblances to the hamadryad in the Royal House of Ardhan, but nevertheless differences remained. When Rael, at sixty-four, took his mother's road and followed his beloved into death, he had looked like a man of less than forty. His son was seventy-five when he finally married and one hundred and thirty-five when he died. The blood of the Eldest could not keep Lord Death away indefinitely, but it certainly delayed his coming.

In those four generations, the Lady's Wood had become just another forest, distinguished only in that Royal Law forbade the cutting of any living tree within its boundaries. In this generation, it had become the favorite hunting ground of the Court.

A bird with snowy white plumage, startling against the deep green of the forest's summer canopy, had separated Tayer and Hanna from the rest of the hunt. Tayer had thought it so unusual, and so beautiful, she rode off after it to get a better look; Hanna trailing, as always, along behind. When the bird disappeared, seemingly between one tree and the next, they were in a part of the forest completely unfamiliar to them and hopelessly lost.

A certain heaviness in the air, a waiting stillness, said Hanna's fear of rain was not wholly brought about by depression. The horses' ears lay flat and the animals had to be urged down the trail. Heavy underbrush clutched at the girls' clothing and the horses' legs with sharp, damp fingers. No birds sang and even the leaves hung still. The sounds of the horses' hoofs on the forest floor were muffled and indistinct.

Silence shrouded the forest.

Thunder shattered the air.

The horses went wild. Hanna screamed and dropped her reins, but Tayer hung grimly on and fought to control her plunging mount.

For what seemed like hours, Tayer's world collapsed to the space between her horse's ears, the reins cutting into her fingers, and the saddle trying to escape from between her legs. Finally the mare stood, trembling but calm, and Tayer turned to check on her cousin.

She wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere in sight.

A trail of broken branches and crushed underbrush showed the direction Hanna's horse had taken in its panicked flight and Tayer thought she could hear, very faintly, her name being called in desperation. Over and over.

Concern and anger chased each other across Tayer's face as she stared at the destruction. Finally, she sighed and swung out of the saddle to better guide the mare around on the narrow trail. She dearly loved Hanna but sometimes wished the girl would learn to cope on her own. It never occurred to her that she dominated Hanna's life so thoroughly there was rarely anything, besides Tayer, for Hanna to cope with.

“She rides as well as I do,” Tayer muttered to Dancer, the mare, maneuvering until they could get off the trail at the same place. “There's no need for this.” She remounted and urged the horse forward.

Dancer picked her way delicately along the line of destroyed underbrush, avoiding the spiky ends of broken branches. Tayer kept her eyes on the forest ahead, hoping for a view of her cousin's pale blue jacket amid the greens and browns.

The second crack of thunder was, if possible, louder than the first. This time Dancer would not be controlled and she took off on a panic-stricken flight of her own. Tayer could only try to keep her seat and pray the horse wouldn't stumble and fall. A branch whipped her across the face and her eyes filled with tears.

When she could see again, it was too late to avoid the heavy limb hanging low in the path of the frightened animal. Tayer had only a brief glimpse of bark and moss and leaves and then the branch swept
her from the saddle. Gasping for breath, and more frightened than she'd ever been in her life, she was miraculously unhurt by the blow and would have walked away only badly bruised had the trees not been so close together where she fell. She screamed as a stub of wood slammed needle-sharp into her shoulder and then the back of her head came down on a protruding root, almost as hard in its gnarled age as stone. For a while, she knew no more.

Drifting in the gray mists just this side of unconsciousness, Tayer felt strong arms lift her effortlessly and cradle her against something that smelled of leather and earth. She giggled weakly, for although she was securely held, the tip of each foot dipped to touch the ground with every step her rescuer took and it struck her as funny that one so strong could be so short. She tried to open her eyes, but the lids refused to obey. Her head lolled back against the stranger's shoulder and the gray turned black.

When the darkness lifted for the second time, she felt herself upon the softest of beds where gentle hands cleaned and treated her throbbing shoulder. These were not the hands that had carried her; she was sure of it although she had no idea of how she knew. Beneath these hands her body trembled and it seemed she had waited all her life for their touch. She gave herself up to the golden glow they wrapped about her, but the reality of her injuries could not be denied for long and pain pulled her from that sanctuary.

As she became aware of the ache in her shoulder and the fire that burned in her head, she also became aware of an arm across her back raising her lips to touch the edge of something wet and cool.

“Drink,” said someone softly, and she did, never even considering questioning the voice.

The cup held only water, but drinking it she thought she had never tasted water before. It was like drinking light, or liquid crystal, and it washed all the pain away.

The sound and smell of the forest was around her still but, rather than feeling the terror her recent experience should have demanded, she had never felt so safe. It reminded her of being very young and held
securely in the circle of her mother's arms. As her head was gently lowered, Tayer opened her eyes.

Sunlight slanted down through the leaves of the tree that towered above her. She struggled to her elbows—helped by that same arm across her back, which withdrew as she steadied—and looked around.

She lay in a clearing ringed with silver birch in their full summer glory and filled with soft golden light. Either the storm had ended or it had never penetrated the circle. The stillness here was peaceful, not ominous. Thick grass covered the ground where she rested—soft and springy and unlike any she had ever seen before.

And he who went with the voice . . .

Never had Tayer seen a man so beautiful. His hair fell to his shoulders in a white so pure it surrounded his head with a nimbus of light. His skin was the color of old copper and his body was so well proportioned he seemed more an artist's conception than a real man. And his eyes . . . Tayer caught her breath when she met his eyes. It looked as if the sunlight poured through them as it did through the leaves of the birch above her and she felt herself sinking into the glory of the other world they showed.

She could have stayed within those eyes forever, but her arms gave out and she collapsed to the grass, the spell broken.

“You are weak,” he said, stroking her forehead. “Rest.”

Tayer felt his touch resonate through her body. Her soul sang, a harp string he had played upon, only she did not, as yet, understand the song.

“Who are you?” she sighed as her eyes closed.

“I am Varkell,” came the answer. “I am a part of the Grove.”

She wanted to ask if she would see him again, but her mind felt wrapped in amber and she couldn't get her voice to work. The last thing she saw was a compassionate smile and then she slept.

When she awoke, she was in her bed in the palace.

*   *   *

“But you believe me.”

“Of course I believe you.” Hanna adjusted her sling and settled
more comfortably amongst the pillows on the lounge. “It's exactly the sort of thing that would happen to you.” The faintest shade of resentment colored her voice and she punched at an overstuffed pink square with her good arm. “Like something out of a fairy tale.”

Tayer turned from the window, where she'd been straining her eyes to see the distant line of trees, and smiled dreamily. “That's exactly what it was like. Like something out of a fairy tale.”

Hanna sighed. The healer, a man of undeniable skill but little imagination, had explained that the silver-haired man with the leaf-green eyes was probably a hallucination caused by the bump on her cousin's head. He'd also said that the scar puckering the smooth curve of Tayer's shoulder was an old wound, long healed. Hanna hadn't argued, because it wasn't her way, but she knew there had been no scar when they rode out for the day's hunt. And if the part about the wounded shoulder was true, she saw no reason to doubt the rest.

“Maybe he was a woodsman,” she said in her most matter-of-fact tone, knowing full well that no woodsman would dare to venture so far into the Lady's Wood.

“He said he was a part of the Grove,” Tayer declared, soft lips curving at the memory.

“But no one has been to the Sacred Grove for years, not since the Lady died. No one even knows where it is! And I should think,” Hanna added, remembering long hours of lessons, “that if a priest tended the Grove, the Scholars would've told us.”

“There were birch trees all around, and green and gold sunlight, and the music of the wind in the leaves.”

Hanna gazed at her cousin in astonishment. Tayer was staring into space, her eyes focused on something Hanna couldn't see, her head cocked to hear a song Hanna couldn't hear.

“He was so beautiful.” Tayer's voice caressed the words. Her hand reached out to stroke a cheek that wasn't there. “He looked into me.”

“The Lady was very beautiful,” Hanna said thoughtfully, trying to bring Tayer's experience into line with what they'd been taught about the Grove, “and tall, with silver hair and green eyes and her sisters
were the same. Maybe it was one of the other hamadryads who tended you. Are you sure it was a man?”

Tayer's eyes lost their dreamy look and gained a mischievous sparkle.

“Oh, I'm very sure,” she said, standing and shaking out the red velvet folds of her skirt. “He was naked. I can't stand to be inside any longer, I'm going for a walk in the garden.”

“Naked! You never mentioned that before!”

The princess turned in the doorway and ran a finger up and down the vines carved around the frame. “Would you have mentioned to your father and brothers that the man who found you unconscious in the woods was naked? Besides, it didn't seem important at the time.” Then she laughed and was gone.

“Well, it would have been important to me,” Hanna muttered at her cousin's departing back.

“What would've been important to you, little one?” asked Mikhail, entering the room through the other door.

“The man Tayer met in the woods was naked.”

“The hallucination?”

Hanna got to her feet. “I don't think she was seeing things,” she said with a conviction that was quite unlike her.

Mikhail took his sister firmly by the shoulders and sat her back down. “Tell me about it,” he commanded.

As he listened, Mikhail paced. He was fair, like Hanna, but where she was the pale gold and blue of early morning he was the tawny gold and violet of a sunset. Like all the children of the Royal House, he was tall, for height was one of the Lady's gifts, but where Hanna and his cousins were sapling-slender he had the bulk of an ancient oak. Although generations removed and thinned by marriage, the power of the tree was still his. Coupled with his massive frame, this heritage gave him the strength to create legends. His black sword was dwarf-crafted, the only such blade in the kingdom, and the tale of how he won it was sure to be told any time men gathered and ale flowed. Mikhail found the tales an embarrassment and would retreat, ears burning, from any praise. As he told Tayer's brothers, “It's no great
feat to split a man in half with one mighty blow when you're twice his size with the strength of the Lady and a magic sword to boot.” As the only warrior in the royal family, both by choice and inclination, Mikhail commanded the Elite.