The Land's Whisper Page 14

  Darse did not speak. He barely thought. With haste, he scooped the papers up into a crumple with one fist and gathered her trembling, inert body into his arms. Small pebbles from her clothing fell onto the path in a light shower. He bent his knees—about to spring forward into a sprint toward the castle—when the limp creature stiffened to life in his arms.

  A firm but small voice came from the now rigid woman. “Enough.”

  Darse nearly dropped her in shock. He righted her with haste and hoped the scarlet on his cheeks would swiftly cool.

  She smoothed her frock, and Darse sought to calm his heart. Her hands were a small reassurance to him, though, for while her face was austere, they shook uncontrollably.

  “I am sorry, madam. I…I thought you were ill. I would never have…if I had known…”

  “It is not customary in our world to handle other people without their consent.” Her tone and face were severe in anger.

  He slumped, mortified. “I had no intention of…handling you… I-I thought you ill,” he stammered. This world, the queen—they all had a way of unbalancing his usual steadiness.

  “I am not used to others in my private garden.” Isvelle looked at him with knowing eyes. With a swipe of her hand, her anger disappeared. “It does not matter anyway,” she said, face and voice now strangely indifferent. “But yes, this section of the garden is for royal use.” Her small hands came up and held her thin waist as she took a deep breath, like she was grasping her body to steady it.

  Darse reeled at the seesaw of emotion. This woman is a mystery. No sense to me, he thought.

  As if reading his mind, she addressed him, “I am not so far beyond comprehension, Darse. Here, you may read this. It concerns the both of us.”

  She reached down to collect the crushed sheets that had fallen from Darse’s fingers. Her gentle hand touched his as she placed the soiled papers in his palm. Darse felt a small thrill but ignored it and thrust his eyes upon the seal.

  Isvelle studied him intently as he read, and it dizzied him. Darse willed the words into focus.

  The seal was in a bold print and style he had seen before: Ordah. The discourse was irrelevant to anything concerning him until he reached the second page, which was nearly soaked through in tears and smelled of must and salt. He would have thought it impossible to weep to the point of aroma. He glanced up at her wonderingly before continuing.

  The ink was clear, despite the saturation, and the words jolted him. Ordah was certain. The Three had spoken to him. She was still alive. Colette was alive.

  He raised his hand to his face, incredulous, for his cheeks were damp from tears. The fate of the girl had weighed more heavily upon him than he had ever realized.

  I’d thought I just hated being a herald of her death, Darse thought.

  He inhaled and let the knowledge wash through him. Slowly, a new hope dawned in him: perhaps Brenol would lose the connection, or they would be allowed to leave.

  He reined his focus back and read on. Ordah was unclear as to where she was. He urged Isvelle to send the two foreigners to meet Arman in Selet. From there, the party would discover something; this much at least was evident. The rest would become clear as they progressed.

  Darse tasted the acrid flavor of irritation, and he scowled. Ordah telling us where we should go fetch. Again.

  He raised his eyes carefully from the page to the queen’s beautiful and blotched face. Isvelle returned his gaze with large, almond-shaped eyes. Something in the survey unsettled her, for she immediately narrowed her expression into an impassive blankness.

  They stood in awkward silence, full of their own secrets. Darse suddenly felt a sense of acute revulsion, and weariness hammered into him with renewed force.

  The foreignness of this place is too much. And Ordah—he ground his teeth in a bitter clench—I just need someone to be straightforward.

  “Isvelle, where is your daughter? What happened to her?” He noted the impatience in his tone but found he cared little.

  The Queen’s face spread into a small smile-grimace. Her slender hands moved up to her face, where they rubbed as if wishing to smear each feature out. Her arms then dropped to her sides—so loose and limp that they appeared almost independent from her body.

  “She would have been nineteen this next season…” Isvelle said weakly. “My soumme, Jasiq, died six orbits ago…” Her bright blue eyes rose and stared through the garden, glazed and unseeing.

  “When Colette was taken, all the worlds in the universe could not contain Jasiq’s fury. He scoured the kingdom and every terrisdan his feet could trod. It became an obsession he couldn’t turn from… He loved her very much.”

  After a moment, her voice began again, hollow and dead. “He was found in Cornice. He had been left to rot in an empty field, nothing for matroles in any direction. Wolves who were posting seal smelled him and had his body returned…

  “As for Colette? My daughter? My little girl?” Her face suddenly flushed with passion, and her voice cracked with fury. “Why was she stolen? Why? I’ve no idea. None. We’d taken her to a festival for her eleventh orbit day. That night, we stayed at a lugazzi inn. I awoke to discover her missing and our guards murdered. No note, no trail. Nothing. It was like she never existed.”

  Isvelle’s eyes flashed dangerously. “But she did. She did exist…” Her lids fluttered shut, and her throat gulped as if seeking to swallow a rancid-tasting reality.

  “Because someone took her, I lost my best friend—my Jasiq—and my little girl.” She shuddered, and her eyes met Darse’s. “I have fought bitterness every day since. Every day.”

  Isvelle peered down at her fists. No longer languid, they were white and fiercely clenched. Shakily, she opened her fingers and pushed the creases out of her dress.

  This woman is more absent than here, he realized.

  “Darse, I cannot hope that this will amount to anything.” She waved her hand to indicate the letter. “I cannot! Too many have been destroyed over this…too many.” She stood erect and strangely composed.

  “I am sorry about your family, Isvelle,” Darse said, but his mind raced under the pressure of the seal. What is Ordah thinking? I have nothing! What does this have to do with me?

  She turned and nodded, lips pursed in discomfort. “There is more.”

  Isvelle’s voice lowered, and, although still melodic, it now contained a cold and lethal bite. Darse’s arms clothed themselves in goose bumps. “When Colette went missing, her father lost control, but Deniel was affected too. Deniel was her childhood friend. They were not related, but they called each other brother and sister. He came to live with us when he was ten orbits and had barely tasted eighteen when she disappeared. He felt her loss keenly. I’ve never seen a boy so anchored to a purpose as he was to finding her again… He searched for moons, seasons, orbits, showing up only for brief periods to rest and get supplies. Even after all this time he’s refused to let it go…” She inhaled raggedly. “He never let more than two moons pass without sending me a letter or some word of progress. Now? It has been eight since I have heard from him…” A soft sigh escaped her lips. “He didn’t have to be my son for me to love him as one.”

  Her last words hit achingly close to his own heart.

  Isvelle leaned her head back, and even the sky seemed to blanket her in despondency. She was no longer the beautiful creature of light he had once glimpsed.

  “Darse, everyone who has sought Colette has lost his life. And how can I ask you—a foreigner and stranger—to find someone you don’t even know? In a land you don’t know? It would be foolishness! How can my heart hope in what is sure to end tragically? How many will die trying to find my girl who…who has probably known death for orbits?”

  Then she began to laugh. Darse’s eyebrows jumped and his face narrowed, but then his shoulders relaxed slightly as he took her in. The laugh was soft and small, the kind that is directed at oneself. “And yet…” Her eyes went alight and suddenly streamed silver tears. “And yet
…how could I be a mother and not?”

  She reached over and placed her hand on Darse’s wrist. He was surprised at its warmth and gentleness. Their eyes locked, blue meeting blue.

  “Darse. I can only ask…but please… Bring back my daughter. Bring her back. I cannot rest until I have her back. Bring her to me.” Her voice was fiery and royal, but most of all, it was maternal. There was something rousing in her that would tear apart the world to save her baby.

  His heart swelled with compassion, but sense nonetheless remained. “I cannot. I cannot risk Bren. I cannot—”

  “You think him safe as a Keeper?”

  Darse’s throat constricted. She does know.

  “How tame do you believe this connection to be? And beyond that, do you think she is the only nurest ever to have disappeared?” Her blue eyes now bore into him with ferocious intensity. “I will not beg or order you on this fool’s errand. But you must flee this place regardless. For the boy’s sake.”

  “We cannot go back.” His fingertips tingled under the memory of the cool cave wall that refused to yield. He heard a visnat’s voice echo in ear: Only good for getting in, only good for getting in, only good for getting in…

  “Ordah says he will request a portal opening for you.”

  Darse froze. “He does?”

  She held up another slip of paper. “If you do this task.”

  Darse’s eyelids closed, and a swooping rush of despair crashed through him. He felt powerless. “We can’t do this!” Darse insisted. “We aren’t capable!”

  “What, then, will you do?”

  Darse frowned. “Others know now, don’t they? They know two foreigners are here. And one is…”

  She nodded. Her face was strained and grieved.

  They stood in silence, and he clawed and bit at the decision before him like a cornered beast. He stared into the greenery in a daze, feeling anguish stretch him thinner than tissue. Her soft hand reached out and grasped his in a tender squeeze. He started, but did not withdraw, and pulled his eyes up to meet hers.

  “In saving mine, you will likely save your own,” she whispered.

  The truth of the statement cascaded through Darse. Somehow, yes, he knew it was truth. Massada was a mystery to him, but this he felt with an eerie assurance, intuition suddenly blossoming into lucid fact. His heart flailed in protest, but regardless, he knew it was right.

  He longed to scream no. He yearned to fling her letter in a crumpled heap to her feet, throw Brenol over his shoulders, and pound the portal open with force. He wanted anything but to bring Brenol deeper into this mess of Massada.

  It is the only way. The only way.

  He shuddered. There was no room to refuse, and he knew it.

  Darse nodded. He would bring her princess back.

  CHAPTER 10

  King or slave, affluent or impoverished, the choice for benere is rarely an easy one.

  -Genesifin

  “I cannot. I cannot,” Brenol muttered, dodging from the sight of servants. He searched the nurest connection for the most abandoned sections of the castle and swerved his feet to follow.

  Darse’s strained face hovered in his memory. The man had barely recounted the news of their imminent departure before the boy had ran away as if fleeing a fire.

  He feverishly paced the castle, soured to the core. His mind raced with images, each with the same beautiful girl he had glimpsed on their first day in the castle—reading in a corner, snatching a treat from the kitchen cooks, laughing with joyous eyes, staring out in gentle silence upon the countryside. He drowned anew with the overpowering crash of Veronia’s affection as each image emerged, panting and reeling under the intensity of the emotion. It was only too clear who the child was.

  Brenol swept around a corner, but again, he saw her—slip of a child cupping a flower in both hands, shivering in the gusty afternoon, curled within a youth’s arms—and this time, the whirl of emotions mixed with his own was too much. He bent forward and heaved. It was quick, far from relieving, and stung his nostrils with stomach acid. With a weak wipe of sleeve to mouth, he left the mess and tottered from the hall. He longed for some kind of consolation but knew there was none to be found.

  “What’s wrong with me?” he whispered. He fought the growing roil stirring up in his gut again and gasped for air while resting his cheek upon the cool, stony wall. The nausea eased, but his self-loathing did not.

  “I’m a horror,” he muttered. “A horror.” He turned his head so the other cheek might also soak in the cold surface. How can I not want to save her?

  The girl, so very real in his mind, was perfect. Her face and glances were innocent; her expressions, gentle; her eyes, dazzling; her smiles, even and sweet. She was so young and full of life. He wanted to touch her cheek and stroke her smooth plaits. Yet in spite of all this, he did not want to rescue her.

  Rescue meant leaving Veronia, leaving the nurest connection, and likely losing it forever. The visnati had told him there was only one connection at a time. The days of multiple nuresti in a terrisdan were no more. While Brenol had sought to hide from the truth of what his new power was doing to him, it had come to stand right before him with Darse’s announcement, and was glaring: he preferred a girl’s death to losing the connection.

  And to see such darkness within himself was crippling.

  His desires tore at the very fabric of who he thought he was, and his resolve oscillated as he grappled to find order in it all.

  I cannot forget this power… I cannot live without it.

  I feel like I can do anything. I feel so good with it. That I’m someone.

  There’s no living anymore unless I have it.

  Merely pondering the return to ordinary life was abhorrent, yet the more Brenol longed to stay, the more he loathed himself.

  He had once thought his heart good. But now? With this despicable churning in him? This groping for power?

  His mind was plagued by the all-too simple question: Would I really let her die so I can remain a nurest?

  It haunted him.

  He saw how easy it would be, how pleasurable, too.

  ~

  Later that night, Darse and Brenol dined together. Darse did not remark upon Brenol’s absence, and Brenol was not anxious to broach the topic. The meal was brought to the sitting area in Darse’s room, and they ate it without relish.

  Why are you silent, Veronia? Why? Brenol asked.

  There was no response.

  You never speak anymore, he thought with bitterness.

  Brenol finally looked up to Darse. “What was it like talking to the Queen?” he asked softly.

  It was the first thing the boy had uttered, but Darse answered without remark. “Truthfully? As though there’s a hole in her glass… She’s had so much happen that her emotions are like a loose wagon wheel—jumping and threatening a crash at every turn.” He recalled the heap of a woman, her mental strain and near incoherency, her leaping from tears to laughter in mere seconds. “But it could also have been the shock of finding her daughter alive after so long and after so much… For how do you handle losing a lover and two children?”

  “Two?” Brenol’s face pinched. He had fled before collecting the entire story.

  “Ah, well, Deniel wasn’t her son, but he lived with them for orbits here in Sleockna. Adopted, I think, but I don’t know the whole of it. Seems like he and Colette were close. Like siblings.” Darse rubbed his furry chin. Since their arrival in Massada, his clean face had disappeared behind a silvery beard.

  “Deniel,” Brenol repeated before dropping off into silence. An unusual sensation tickled at his mind, as if the name itself were an omen. He probed the connection looking for answers but was only rewarded with a brief image of the young man—striding through castle, rough and serious, weather-beaten and bronze, twenty orbits, smooth brown hair, even features, eyes as hard as granite. The eyes were what gave Brenol pause. Deniel was the same young man he had seen in other images with Colette, but now he
harbored a lethal glance. The determined fury of those orbs was unquenchable.

  Veronia’s rage swept through Brenol. His hands shook as it drained away, and he inhaled slowly. The fury from the land had nearly brought him to his knees.

  Why? What did he do? Why are you so mad?

  Veronia’s eye pressed upon the boy hotly, but the land held its silence. Brenol stewed with irritation. Crippled by these stupid feelings and it won’t even explain.

  Darse continued, unaware of Brenol’s internal storm. He told the youth about Deniel hunting for Colette and his recent disappearance. “I cannot imagine scouring the world for someone for eight orbits.”

  Nor do I want to, Brenol thought crossly, and added aloud, “Why would we suddenly be so much more capable than everyone else? We know nothing about any of this.” He tried to ignore the peevish tone escaping his lips. “Nothing.”

  Or this place, Darse thought gravely. “I guess we try, even if we can’t find anything.”

  Brenol sneered. “Ordah seems to think he knows what we can do.”

  Darse practically snorted in disgust. “Ordah indeed. There is something we certainly agree upon. If he knows so much maybe he could’ve dealt with this eight orbits ago and before the deaths of everyone Isvelle loved. He teases us with a portal opening, but can he even bring it about?” Darse’s eyes narrowed, and he felt a low growl rumble in his chest. “He treats us like we’re the town mutts. Sent to fetch, called with the promise of a scrap, ordered to sit.”

  “And,” said Brenol, as he glanced sideways at the man, “I don’t know why there’s such a rush. We don’t have to leave tomorrow.” He sighed, stood, and strode to the small pane of glass to peer out upon the courtyard, but darkness prevented his vision. He blinked and felt his ear pricking alert, for an odd voice, cadent as poetry, sounded in the room.

  “Death will be a close companion before we are done.”

  Darse’s neck snapped up, and his throat constricted. “Bren?” he asked.

  Brenol clamped his mouth shut, suddenly realizing the voice had issued from his own lips. He quivered and paled. “I’ve no idea where that came from.”