The Land's Whisper Read online

  After they nodded their assent, Colvin sipped a ladle of water and wiped away the sweat from cheek and brow. He left with his characteristically sober expression, stepping softly with gloves a-flap.

  ~

  They dined that evening with the Colburns, a genial couple with three rosy-cheeked daughters. The conversation was warm and full of laughter, but before the meal had even commenced, Brenol found his spine clenching and his neck tingling to life in a now-familiar way.

  After dinner, instruments were procured, and the girls padded about in light dance to their father’s fiddling. Brenol remained seated. He itched to be free and walking the bare countryside.

  Garnoble’s eye, he thought. It is so strongly on me.

  Eventually the party spoke farewells. Brenol tugged his light jacket on and smiled his thanks but could barely hide his impatience. There was much of the night ahead before he would meet the consolation of solitude.

  As they walked to Colvin’s house, Darse glanced at the quiet Brenol but did not interrupt his musings, and they soon came upon a plot dense with flowers and fruit. It was a beautiful garden, even in the dusk. The scents mingled in a citrusy sweetness and accompanied them down the winding path to the doorway. Their knocks produced Colvin, attired in a tide of blue. He had washed from the day’s work and stood before them with an unusual spark in his eyes. Darse peered at him curiously. Yes, the visnat’s cloak of quiet detachment had been shed, and his face was open and relaxed. Either Colvin was a creature of home, or he had deemed the two trustworthy enough to reveal his true air.

  They entered, and the low ceilings forced Darse’s back into an aching arch, but the wonders of the tiny home helped distract the man from his discomfort. It was furnished sensibly, but decorated far differently than the quarters of the other visnati who softened their habitations with rugs, drapes, and art. This house was as much a garden as the plot outdoors, for Colvin had flooded it with greenery and flowers. Artfully placed trellises of blue climbing roses, pots of alabaster orchids and lavender azaleas, vines of crimson blossoms. All splashed color across the room, and the scents soothed rather than clashed together. To have planned the sunlight necessary for each was in itself a feat, and there must also have been an eye to seasons and temperature. A meticulous hand was behind it, certainly.

  “Well met. Come, sit. Tea?” Colvin beckoned them forward and poured an amber liquid into earthen mugs. Soft steam rose.

  The two collected their beverages and lowered their frames into awkwardly low seats. Darse extended his legs in an ankle-cross; he felt ever the giant amongst these people.

  Colvin’s face grew sober. “Darse, Bren. I will not hide my purpose.”

  “Please,” Darse replied simply.

  The visnat held up a creased square. “I have a note here from Ordah. It was left with the maralane for you…I was told to wait for further word before passing it along, but there has been nothing, so I think it is time to give it to you.” He slid the folded sheet across to Darse, who took it in hand. Brenol leapt up to stand over his shoulder.

  The paper was thin and smooth. It carried a thick mound of vibrantly gold wax imprinted with an eight pointed star. Darse opened the sheet carefully. It said:

  Darse and Brenol-

  Go to Isvelle, the queen.

  -Ordah

  “He thinks he can jus—” Brenol began, then suddenly realized he had no idea to whom he was referring. His face drained white, and he fumbled to repair any solecism. “Oh. Sorry. What does he mean?”

  Colvin smiled at the boy. Brenol was unusual to him in speech and action, but Colvin perceived much goodness. There was a desire to make the world right that poured from the boy.

  And something more, Colvin thought. He walks with the land as I’ve never seen…a command, a peace…It reminds me of her…but it’s different…

  Colvin allowed the thought to air in his mind, ignoring the sharp pang that accompanied it. He answered Brenol. “I’d wondered what he was going to tell you… There’s much in here, and much not said. But that’s how Ordah writes.”

  Anticipating the question, he continued. “Ordah…well, Ordah is our man of foresight, if Massada ever claimed to carry one. He comes from a region—and a family—known for being blessed with the gift to perceive pieces of the future. He sleeps during the day, living out in the desert wilderness and rocky cliffs of Callup.” His lips quirked up in a tiny smile. “People say he sleeps under the sun because he reads the stars at night, but I think he just doesn’t want to have to talk to people.” He shrugged, then leaned forward to draw the steaming beverage again to lips.

  “That personable?” Darse asked.

  “Not many choose to befriend cacti.”

  “Is this something we should heed?” asked Darse. Something about it churned the old, irrational fears to the surface; his skin could almost feel the dream-soaked sheets clinging to him.

  “It is, it is. He may not be the most social of men, but he does have power and an honest tongue. It would be best to listen, though I’d prefer if he didn’t feel the need to make things so complicated and hidden.” Colvin’s face narrowed in severity before it disappeared with a sip behind steam.

  “Why does he want us there, though?” Brenol asked.

  “Do you think it is dangerous?” Darse added.

  Colvin shrugged. “It could be anything. I’ve heard of Ordah sending a man on a trek to find a stone.” The visnat shook his head. “Sometimes one cannot see his reasons until orbits later. But he does have reasons.”

  Brenol’s face screwed up in disbelief. “A stone?”

  “It made sense later. But for orbits the man despised Ordah.”

  “Have you ever met him?” Darse queried thoughtfully.

  Laughter bellowed out from the visnat’s core. “I have indeed. And I don’t care to again.”

  Darse smiled. I understand him when he is plain like this. I even like him.

  Colvin waved his brawny arm in a dismissive gesture. “He’s friends with the maralane, and is jealous of anyone else who seems to be. He does not look kindly upon my ties with them.”

  A new thought graced Darse’s mind. “Would Ordah be able to get Bren back through the portal?”

  Brenol frowned silently.

  Colvin considered. “It is a possibility. You will have to ask. Perhaps he could encourage the maralane to open one for you.” He pointed at the letter. “But you’ll have to listen to him or he will certainly never consider anything.”

  “Colvin?” Brenol asked. “What happened with the maralane? And your family?”

  The visnat, blinked, surprised by the question. “The maralane? The tie between us?”

  Brenol nodded.

  “That is simple,” Colvin explained. “My great, great grandfather was traveling to meet a friend in the northern terrisdans. He saved a maralane one day. She’d been enticed to shore somehow by a vagrant of the lugazzi. I don’t know how he did it, but regardless, my grandfather found the man before he had taken her far. He had wrapped her in his cloak and was escaping into the mountains. She was thrashing and close to death—you can’t simply transport a maralane in your pocket. They need the water as much as fish do. Grandfather startled him, and he dropped the girl and fled into the woods.

  “Anyway, my grandfather rushed her back to the water. She was alive, but barely. More maralane appeared and learned of the events. A strong bond was formed that day between him and the maralane, which carried all visnati into an alliance to a degree. The maralane do not forget as quickly as most creatures do, and so the bond has lasted several generations. And really, they have been my friends when I had few others.”

  He stared off in silence for a moment. “Well, men, to the queen you shall go. Even if it is under the sour pen of Ordah.” He chuckled, finding humor in the prophet’s avenue of communication: the channel—maralane to Colvin—that Ordah held most disdainfully.

  “There is only one Queen Isvelle, a lunitata. She reigns in Veronia, a terr
isdan south of us. All I know of her is that she is beautiful and troubled.”

  Darse twitched and repressed a shudder. Veronia? The name from his dream made his limbs turn to ice, and he could feel his heart lurch. Do I flee? Or seek answers? Was it just a dream? Or was there more?

  “Do you know anything—anything—else about Veronia?” The name seemed to stick to his palate like rancid meat.

  “Veronia itself?” Colvin’s eyes sharply surveyed Darse. It was easy to see the man’s white-knuckled grip on the armchair.

  Darse jerked his head in assent.

  Colvin spoke, still observing Darse’s tense frame. “Veronia is a peaceful terrisdan. I don’t know what worries you, but as far as the land lies, you have nothing to fear. Veronia, while south of here, is still considered part of the western terrisdans. It is far more welcoming than the most southern ones.”

  Darse loosened his hold and tried to calm his heart. Just a dream, he reminded himself forcefully. Just a dream.

  After a few breaths his mind cleared. He shook his head at his foolishness. Nothing could have known Brenol’s name. It was only my mind.

  Brenol gave him an odd glance but dismissed the behavior; Darse had been anxious from the beginning.

  Colvin went on, “I will help all I can. But now that I know his directions, I think it’s a good plan to move soon.” He plucked out a pencil and sketched a rudimentary map for them to illustrate their future travel. He handed it to Darse, and indicated the route with a finger. “If you raft down through Garnoble and Veronia, you’ll arrive at the palace in three, no more than four, days.”

  “Colvin?”

  The visnat looked up with clear and open eyes. “Yes?”

  Darse almost pulled his gaze down but resolved to the task. It was time, and he could no longer postpone. Darse licked his lips hesitantly and finally found words. “Will you tell me the secret about my father?”

  The boy snapped his neck sideways to consider Darse. What secret? Brenol wondered.

  The man held his palms up as though begging for bread. His unshaven face was equally entreating.

  Colvin sighed. “I feared you might ask. You do not miss much… All right, Darse. It is harsh though. Are you sure you want to know?”

  The hungry face was answer enough.

  Colvin inhaled deeply, maintaining a steady gaze with the man. “Sim was an other-worlder. He stole something from a terrisdan and nearly died from it. It was a—”

  “Tenralily pod.”

  “You know?” Colvin asked, surprised.

  “I know that much. I never understood why it was so important, though.”

  Colvin’s eyes pinched in pity. “The magic of tenralilies was a fable. A story to tell by the fire. They had no more healing properties than the spit between your teeth.”

  Darse shook his head in confusion.

  “I imagine your father was willing to try anything. We all know what desperation a man can feel when he loves.”

  Brenol glanced between the two. “But what happened?”

  “To steal from another is a disgrace, but to steal from a terrisdan? It’s close to suicide. The land marks you and your family. You’re branded as traitors. And it’s unlikely you’d ever manage to escape.”

  A cold thought stung Darse. “Was it Veronia?”

  Colvin laughed. The humor was lost upon his guests. “No. Selet.”

  “Oh. Would Selet remember my da enough to mark me?”

  “Likely not.” Colvin paused, but then continued grimly. “But that is not the secret. The cupped whispers and strange glances you see…they’re not because of his theft.”

  Darse’s eyebrows arched up in question and he leaned forward, barely breathing.

  “I assume you know she died in Massada?” Colvin asked gently.

  Darse nodded.

  “Marietta was the first to pass from the icar, the black fever. It began with her and has spread like dandelion seeds scattered in the wind.” His voice lowered in sadness. “It’s been a devastation to all peoples, especially ours…”

  Colvin met Darse’s gaze and spoke with a soft compassion. “I will not hold back, but this cannot be easy to hear…”

  Darse swallowed.

  “Massadans hear the names Sim and Marietta and cringe. The two are seen as cursed, and people believe they brought this evil upon us all. Sim was an other-worlder. And whether he carried the fever here or not, most blame him.”

  Darse’s eyebrows furrowed; the picture still seemed incomplete. “I’d no idea.”

  “Why would you?”

  “How has it been worse for the visnati?” Brenol asked.

  Colvin winced. “A few orbits ago, thirty-two were lost in just a moon. Then twelve more in the next.”

  Darse blinked. That was an enormous blow to such a small community.

  “Is there a cure?” Brenol asked. “What about the tenralilies? Maybe their power wasn’t just a story?”

  “Really, the pods were nothing. They were just a legend of health. But the oddity is that after Marietta’s death, all tenralilies and the trees they grew with, groyu, disappeared. It doesn’t make sense. How could they have vanished from an entire terrisdan? And Selet especially? That is not a land to meddle with.” Colvin shook his head in bewilderment. “But as for a cure? Marietta was the only person who was ever seen alive with the fever. Now, none are sick. We just see the aftermath of black corpses. It leaves death and nothing more. There are no survivors.”

  Just trails of bodies, thought Darse gruesomely.

  “Our people live in terror. It cannot be stopped. It cannot even be predicted.”

  And they all blame my parents, Darse realized.

  “Is there nothing to be done?”

  “Nothing. Had there been more information about Marietta and her care, there may have been treatments or medicines… But her nurse hung herself after she died.”

  “What?” Darse stuttered.

  Colvin winced as though he had seen the scene himself. “Sim was carried back to his home by wolves. He found his baby hungry and alone, his soumme dead and sheeted, and the nurse hanging from the old willow behind the house.”

  ~

  Brenol stole one more glance at Darse’s brooding figure before quietly slinking from the barn. The man needed privacy to sift through thoughts, and Brenol longed for time away from Coltair. He shadowed his way through the dirt roads and padded softly to the outskirts of town, out toward the little knoll looking out upon the sloping countryside. It had become his place where solitude and company met in peace.

  He pressed forward, and with each step he breathed easier. The piercing eye of Garnoble seemed to irk his insides when he was surrounded by others, but out in private, the hovering glare felt more like a friendly focus. Sometimes the boy wondered how Darse could think with the hot gaze burning down upon every movement, but the awareness of the land’s eye was not as sharp in others, or so it appeared.

  He arrived at the tree where he normally rested, and there sat Colvin.

  Brenol jumped in surprise. “What are you doing here?” He must have left immediately after we did. Did he know I’d come here?

  Colvin’s face looked gray and hollow, half shaded from the tree, half painted by beams of moonlight. His back arched forward in waiting, and his legs were crossed under him. Colvin glanced up with a soft concern. “I feel I should be asking you the same.”

  “Oh.”

  “You speak to Garnoble?” Colvin asked, but his eyes said he already knew.

  Brenol merely nodded. He did not feel shame, exactly, but it was uncomfortable to have his secret laid so vulnerably bare.

  Colvin scooped up a handful of soil in his palms and let it fall slowly to the ground. “It is beautiful, is it not? Garnoble?”

  Brenol sighed. He understands. The sensation of relief was surprising, for the burden had been a quiet and untouchable one—one he had not even noticed yoked upon his shoulders. He inhaled slowly, grateful for the loosening in his
gut. “It is. Garnoble—”

  “You speak much then?” The visnat’s hands fidgeted in his lap.

  “Yes, although it doesn’t always answer.”

  Colvin nodded, as though more had been answered than Brenol knew was being asked. “And it is audible?”

  The boy felt the visnat’s penetrating eyes upon him, taking in every flicker and facial expression. Suddenly, a wariness stole upon his tongue. He had longed to unleash a waterfall of questions that plagued his mind, especially about the booming voice from the cave, but now he bridled his tongue. He had no reason but raw instinct.

  Brenol finally spoke, forming his words slowly. “Only a whisper of a voice. I have to listen carefully, but yes, it is audible.”

  Colvin rubbed several small stones between his callused palms, “Bren, I shake inside for some reason…”

  Brenol’s eyebrows raised in wonder.

  “I’ve never seen any walk the land as you do, save a nurest. The terrisdan soil seems to sway under your feet and raise up plants effortlessly beneath your hands. I have watched. I—I just have—I’ve never before seen that. You are poetry upon the soil, and yet you are no nurest.” He peered over at the boy as if closer scrutiny would unlock the mystery. “No, not a nurest. But it is something. I don’t know why you have this gift…but be careful with it. Things like that can turn against you, even if you are seeking benere.”

  Brenol felt strangely unconcerned. His relationship with Garnoble was secret, but he experienced it more as an awareness of reality than something to tremble over. The land around him was alive; others’ blindness seemed of greater gravity than his own vision.

  Brenol probed elsewhere, hoping to shift the attention. “Benere? What’s that?”

  “Goodwill, goodness, wholeness.”

  “Nurests?”