Wizard of the Grove (8 page)

He moved restlessly from window to window as Hanna told him of the scar and of all she and Tayer had discussed that morning. From the way he twisted and crushed his heavy leather belt, Hanna could tell he wasn't pleased with Tayer's strange experience.

“Has there ever been a man in the Sacred Grove, Mikhail?”

“Not that I ever heard of, only the Lady and her sisters. And the Lady is dead and her sisters are asleep.”

Hanna sighed and shook her head. “So if it was a man, Tayer must have been seeing things.” And if those were the kind of visions a bump on the head caused, she would be more inclined to fall off her own horse in the future. The visions caused by a broken arm were tedious in comparison. “Still, we could've been in the right part of the forest.”

“By King's Law,” Mikhail reminded her, “no one has been to the Grove since the Lady died.” He raised a foot to kick a delicately carved footstool out of his way, thought better of it and stepped around. “Not even those of us who bear her blood know its location.”

“But we all know it's in there,” Hanna insisted. “We all know it isn't just a story.”

“Aye.” Mikhail stopped his pacing and stood at the window where Tayer had stood earlier, his gaze also trying to pierce the dark line of trees. “But I've hunted all over that area, been through the forest and to the Great Lake on the other side, and I've never found the Grove.”

“Perhaps it didn't want to be found.”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you think Tayer was seeing things?”

He turned from the window and looked down at his sister. His face was troubled.

“No.”

And they both remembered the scar. The healer had insisted that Tayer had carried the mark since childhood, but they knew better.

“Where is she now?”

“She went for a walk in the gardens.”

Hanna watched her brother's departing back with concern. He thought no one suspected, but she knew him too well to be fooled. There were times when his love shone from his eyes like a beacon and Hanna wondered how Tayer had not been blinded by the intensity of the light.

Tayer, used to being adored, had never noticed.

*   *   *

On his way to the garden, Mikhail considered all that Hanna had said. Tayer was vain and willful, he was not the sort to let love blind him to another's faults, but she had never been a liar. She'd never even had to resort to the small lies children use to make themselves important; from the day of her birth she'd been the darling of the court. If Tayer said she saw a naked man in Lady's Wood, then that's exactly what she saw.

But why did she not want her father and brothers to know? He could think of only one reason.

He scowled and growled low in his throat, so frightening a young servant hurrying by on some errand of her own, that she dropped the tray she carried and pressed herself against the wall one fist in her mouth to stop a shriek.

Mikhail stared at her in astonishment, then, realizing that her terror was directed at him, blushed and bent to retrieve her tray.

“You mustn't mind me,” he said, wincing inwardly as the girl continued to stare at him with wide eyes.

“No, milord?” She gave a tiny, jerky bow as she took back her tray.

“No. I was thinking of something else and didn't even know you were there.” He smiled down at her, the last of his anger fading behind his embarrassment.

She tried a tentative smile in return. “As you say, milord.”

It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea of which garden Tayer had gone to and there were at least half a dozen scattered about the palace. “You, uh, haven't seen the princess, have you?”

Although Hanna was equally
a
princess,
the
princess could only refer to Tayer.

“Yes, milord. I saw her enter the small walled garden behind the new archives in the south wing.”

“Thank you.” Mikhail smiled again and headed toward the maze of corridors that would take him to the recently added south wing.

The servant stood for a moment, watching him go, her expression remarkably similar to that Mikhail's sister had worn moments before. The emotional entanglements of royalty were not her concern, but the look on his face when he mentioned the princess sent shivers down her spine. She sighed and went on her way, wishing that someday, someone, would look at her like that.

*   *   *

Mikhail stepped into the late afternoon sunlight of the garden and the color drained from his face. Tayer lay crumpled on the path, pale skin made paler by the deep crimson pool of her skirts. He dove across the tiny courtyard and threw himself to his knees by her side, a trembling hand reaching out to touch the smooth column of her throat. Beneath his fingers, her life throbbed fast but sure.

“You called, milord?”

“No, I . . .” Mikhail looked up at the gray-robed Scholar. The noise he'd made as he moved had not been a call exactly, but. . . . “Uh, I mean yes, I called. Get a healer. The princess has fainted.”

*   *   *

“In bed for a week? But I feel fine!”

“Of course you do, Princess, which is why you were taking a nap in the roses.”

“I just fainted.”

“Precisely my point.” The healer motioned for the maid to close the heavy brocade curtains and, with the room darkened, waved a candle before Tayer's face. “Follow the light with your eyes, please.”

“The Lord Chamberlain's wife faints all the time and she doesn't have to stay in bed.”

“Just with your eyes, Princess. Don't turn your head. The Lord Chamberlain's wife is a weak, foolish woman who thinks fainting makes her interesting.
You
have received a nasty blow to the head. Not the same thing at all.” He blew out the candle. “In bed for a week. No riding for a month.”

“A month?”

“A fall from a garden bench is one thing, a fall from a horse is something else entirely. It is, if you recall, what got you into this mess in the first place.”

“Oh, please, you can't mean it.” Tayer looked up at him through her lashes, her lower lip beginning to quiver. Women less beautiful than Tayer had destroyed whole countries with that look. The healer, however, was more concerned with the way her pupils were dilating as the maid threw back the curtains and flooded the room with light.

“Of course, I mean it,” he said, apparently satisfied for he turned to go. “I always say what I mean. No riding for a month.”

Tayer pleaded, pouted, and petitioned her father, but the verdict stayed the same: visits around town in a litter were permitted but riding was not.

One could not go to the forest in a litter.

Used to being active, the princess was unbearable as an invalid. With riding denied her, there just wasn't that much that she could do. She had little interest in statecraft and the public duties of the third child of the Royal House were few and far between.

“If I have to set one more stupid tapestry stitch, I shall scream!” Tayer leaped to her feet and darted about the room, almost bouncing from the walls. “There must be something else I can do.”

Hanna sighed and bent to retrieve the skeins of silk now widely scattered and hopelessly tangled.

“I know,” the princess dropped back into her chair in a most unprincesslike manner, “I shall garden.”

*   *   *

“Tayer, what are you doing?”

Tayer glared up at her brothers and jabbed her ivory handled trowel into the damp earth. “Even you two should be able to figure that out. I'm planting roses.”

Davan pursed his lips. “They'll never grow there; not enough light. Why don't you leave gardening to the gardeners and do something you're capable of?”

She threw the trowel at him. Then, just to be sure he knew she was truly annoyed, followed it with the tray of seedlings.

Eyrik laughed.

She stood and dumped the contents of her watering pot over his head.

*   *   *

Only Hanna noticed how often Tayer went to the one window in the palace where the dark line of the forest could be seen in the distance.

No one heard her call out his name in her sleep.

Hanna bore the brunt of Tayer's dissatisfaction. She was expected; not only by Tayer but by everyone else in the palace, to keep her cousin entertained and cheerful. She not only suffered from Tayer's moods but from the accusations that she could have done something to prevent them.

“I love Tayer,” she sighed to Mikhail one evening, “but there have been times lately when I haven't liked her very much.”

“How can you say that?” Mikhail protested. “You've always been like sisters. You should be glad you can help her.”

“There are times,” Hanna said sharply as she hurried down the hall in answer to an imperious summons from the invalid, “when I don't like you very much either.”

Mikhail stood and stared in astonishment as Hanna slammed the door to Tayer's room behind her. “What did I say?”

When the month finally ended, a great picnic was arranged in
celebration of Tayer's official return to health. The king allowed Tayer to convince him that such a picnic could only be held in the lee of the Lady's Wood. Officially, because the shade beneath the trees would be welcome in the heat of the afternoon. Actually, because, unlike the healer, the king was not immune to his daughter looking up through her eyelashes and quivering her lower lip. He knew his weakness, however, and he was grateful she wanted such an insignificant thing.

If any of the court considered a two-hour ride for a picnic a little extreme, they kept silent. As the king had allowed himself to be convinced, so did the court. And if truth be told, after the last four weeks, the court was as glad Tayer was mobile as Tayer was herself.

A large and merry company set out from the palace in the early morning. In the midst of the crowd, the laughter, and the sunshine it was easy to miss seeing that Tayer's gaiety had a brittle edge and that Mikhail smiled grimly if at all. Hanna noticed, but, as usual, no one noticed Hanna.

Mikhail didn't know who, or what, Tayer had seen in the forest that day but he knew that whether spirit, demon, or mortal man, it had bewitched her. He had no doubt she would try to lose herself in the woods that afternoon and attempt to find the creature. Silently he vowed, and swore on his sword, that he would not take his eyes off her until she was safely back in the palace and far away from the naked man with silver hair and green fire in his eyes.

Keeping an eye on Tayer turned out to be difficult; she flitted from person to person like a nervous butterfly. Mikhail's efforts were further hampered by the duties expected of him as a Prince of the Realm. It wasn't easy being charming, witty, and vigilant all at once.

When the sun was at its zenith and its warmth—combined with a large and excellent lunch, sent on its way with several gallons of good wine—was putting many of the party to sleep, he noticed Tayer disappearing amongst the trees. With a curse, he leaped to his feet and, paying no attention to the drowsy protests rising from those about him, ran after her.

The forest seemed unnaturally still. Not a leaf rustled, not a bird
sang, and although Mikhail was barely thirty feet from the meadow—and could, in fact, still see brightly colored robes and gay pennants—not a sound from that direction could he hear. Motes of dust danced in rays of sunlight, but they danced alone. There was no trace of Tayer.

Loosening his sword in its sheath, Mikhail bent to study the ground. Very faintly, for the moss and leaves were already shifting to fill the track, he saw the print of his cousin's foot. And then another. The trail shifted, and twitched, almost as if it had a mind of its own, but Mikhail was one of the best trackers in Ardhan and this was no ordinary hunt. Soon he was running, his eyes never leaving the ground.

He didn't see the root that tripped him. He would've sworn there was no root there. It came as a great surprise to find himself suddenly stretched full length upon the forest floor, the wind knocked out of him and his chin digging a trench in the sod. He lay there for a moment catching his breath, and then for another moment strangely unwilling to rise. The silence and sunlight washed over him in green-gold waves.

*   *   *

The forest had welcomed Tayer. The moment she stepped beneath the trees the force which had pulled her this way and that, keeping her on the knife's edge between fear and longing, disappeared. Only the longing remained and a gentle tugging which directed her feet.

As she walked deeper into the Lady's Wood, on paths she had no doubt were created just for her, a breeze came out of the stillness, caressed her bare arms and ran unseen fingers through her hair. When the path disappeared, she unquestioningly followed the breeze. It drew her through a ring of silver birch and then left on errands of its own.

Tayer had never seen a more beautiful place. The sunlight poured down into the clearing like liquid gold. It had a tangible presence in the air and spilled out of the buttercups scattered in the thick grass. As Tayer stepped into the center of the circle, she felt the light fill her, like rich wine in a crystal goblet. The birches that surrounded her, all but one majestically old, glowed with their own inner light.

“You have come.”

From the one tree still straight and smooth he stepped, and for Tayer the light in the clearing dimmed in the glory of the light that flowed from him. He was just as Tayer remembered.

She stepped forward to meet him, hands outstretched and trembling.

“You were not a dream,” she said softly, thankfully. “You were not a dream.”

And Varkell, who was a part of the Grove, with silver hair and eyes that held an unworldly green light, looked very human as he drew her into his arms.

“Nor were you.”

*   *   *

She'd left Varkell's side only because he'd told her she must, but every part of Tayer's body still sang with his presence. Even outside the Grove, there was a lushness in the air, a glory in the ordinary things; in trees and shrubs and moss.