Into the Dark Lands (11 page)

Erin screamed as well. The sound contained everything that words or tears could not. Almost crazy, she lunged forward at the retreating figure of the Servant of the Enemy. He didn't even notice her; his attention was drawn to the sight of Kandor—Servant as well, but of the Bright Heart.

Kandor of Lernan, followed by warrior-priests, came into the clearing. As the nightwalker wore his shadow, so Kandor wore his light; it was all the armor and all the weapon that he needed. Those warrior-priests wore the light as well—too bright and powerful to be their own. They had touched the Gifting, then. But they also wore armor that glinted beneath surcoat and helms that obscured their faces. Their weapons were drawn as they followed in Kandor's wake to step into the ruined campsite. Two of the wagons were on their sides, their canvas torn and shredded. The horses were lumps that rested upon the ground in stillness and silence. And the Malanthi were there, dressed in like armor, covered in dark surcoats. The blood-shadows surrounded them; they had pulled their power from the dying and wore it well. Already some carried the items that the Lernari dead had worn, but these they dropped at once.

Kandor barely paused to survey the surroundings before battle was joined anew. But this time the odds were even. The
Lernari warriors began their wards and attacks against the invading Malanthi, and Kandor began to circle his chosen foe.

“Valeth.”

“Kandor.” The Servant rose slowly. The white-fire of Lernan had left its mark.

They spoke no other words, but they had no need to. They were Servant of Light against Servant of Dark—an echo of the battles that had once existed before the birth of the world. What words were necessary?

Erin walked in a daze through her first battlefield. If any saw her at all, they didn't seem to pay her much attention, and she was hardly aware of them in her turn. One foot followed another in a seemingly endless path to the deserted corpse of her mother. Only once before had she seen such a corpse—and then she had turned away into the comfort of shoulders that would never catch her tears again. This time she did not balk at the sight. She had to see and to memorize the exact price paid for her fear.

She had to swear, though no one would hear the blood-oath, that she would never,
never
pay that price again.

Tears would not come, but she didn't deserve them. Let the sounds of renewed battle be her mother's farewell; Erin knew she didn't have the right to speak.

But she could not stop herself from caressing the still, torn face, or trying to embrace what was left.

She felt, rather than saw, Kandor's approach. She heard his words, Servant-sure and calm, echo in the emptiness that was left her. He had led them to victory.

“Come, child. This is no place for you. You are safe now.”

She turned to him, eyes glinting like steel, knowing—hoping—that she would never be safe again.

“She's dead.”

He watched her still, pale face, his eyes darkening. “Yes,” he said, bowing to the inevitable. He reached out for her with one hand. “Come, little one. There is nothing to fear, not any longer. You are safe.”

“I'm not afraid of dying,” she replied, limply following where he led. “And I never will be again.”

Kandor's arm encircled her shoulders; she felt the faint pulse of his power ebbing into her and yanked herself away to continue walking with him at more of a distance.

“Child . . .”

She turned only once, to look again upon the body of the
woman who had given so much to the warriors on the fields of battles such as this one.

“It should have been me.” Her voice was ash.

Kandor said nothing, and once again she felt his power come into her to try to soothe the loss she felt.

But it was all she had left and she would not release it.

 

The trunk of the Lady's tree shimmered as Latham walked into it. The disorientation that he normally felt upon entering the Woodhall meant little to him now; it paled to insignificance beside the weight he carried.

The long hall was completely still; no hint of fragrant breeze showed evidence of the Lady's power. His steps, quiet as they were, echoed down the length of marble corridor.

He could see, as he approached the conservatory, that even the plants looked wilted.

Bright Heart, he thought as he walked past them, is all the news I bear to be bad?
He ran a tired hand over his face. Only then did he realize that he was crying.
Only a Servant of the Enemy could have done this to you, Kera. The best of the Malanthi would not have had the power. Only a nightwalker. He
wiped his cheeks clean.

Almost no healer died such a terrible death; the very act of injuring them allowed them to reach their power more fully. The Malanthi—the half-human, half-Servant priests of the Enemy—hadn't the power to stop a healer from touching the Bright Heart's blood. But a true Servant's power would be enough.

Ah Kera, Kera—you must have helped the war more than we knew to draw such attention to yourself. Rest in the peace of the beyond.

The sound of his footsteps stopped completely as he struggled to compose himself. Later, much later, he would allow himself the luxury of feeling this loss.

But now . . .

He began to walk again, taking slow, deep breaths. He had his duty to perform. At least he was not the one to bear the news to the Grandfather, or to Telvar.

“Lady?” He called her name once before he turned the last corner. His voice was quiet but solid.

“Latham.”

He took the last step and saw her back.

“What news?”

He opened his mouth, and for the first time in years, the words failed him completely.

She turned then. And her expression destroyed the last vestige of control that he'd maintained.

For her face was old, tired, and terribly vulnerable. It seemed, for an instant, that the Light of God had never graced it; that the Blood of the Bright Heart had never flowed through it. And her eyes, which were always living emeralds, were now only cold, large stones. She stared almost helplessly at him, her arms spun tightly around her like translucent web.

She knows
, he thought.
Somehow, she knows.
And for the first time in his life, as he looked at her, he saw her as Servant of the Light—ageless and immortal. It was odd to think of her so only now that she displayed a weakness that might barely have been hinted at.

He felt a cold anguish well up in him.

She knows.
He let those words sink in, but this time, instead of turning away from them as he had for fifteen years, he pushed them forward that one logical step—he was, after all, line scholar.

She knew.

Five years she had spent in spell trance. Five years, following futures that only she could follow; pushing aside a veil that only the Servants dared touch.

How many other deaths did you see, Lady? How many other lives might we have saved?

How could you sacrifice your own daughter?

And watching him, the Lady of Elliath saw that he knew. She drew herself up, calling upon the remnants of her power to provide her with some ragged comfort and some hint of the glory that the Lernari had always associated with her.

It would not come.

Lernan, God, I have given you everything. Do not desert me now.

And a hint of His light, a finger of His power, reached out to embrace her.

She faced Latham squarely.

“Latham. What brings you?”

He heard her words, but could not answer her. Instead he turned, showing her the circle that emblazoned the gray of his back.

The Lady of Elliath watched him walk away.

Is this all?
she thought bitterly. She was too tired to panic.
Have I revealed what I dare not reveal? Have I spoken wordlessly of what I dared not speak? Is all my pain to serve no point?

She called him again, but he did not halt.

She set her power aside wearily and began to follow.
So be it, then. Did I show no grief or pain in the future?

“Latham!” The voice that came from her throat startled her. It was a human voice, mortal.

Where the Light could not touch him, this simple thing could. He stopped and, after a shaky second, turned to face her.

She spoke no words as she approached him. She made no plea, not even to ask for his trust or his silence.

And because she did not, he knew he would give her both. For she was the Lady of Elliath, the strongest of all Servants of the Light. Darkness did not—could not—mar her.

He had only part of her blood—the barest hint of Light. He was mortal and caught by mortal traps. If for Lernan's sake she had done nothing, there had to be a reason for it. If she had forced herself to be silent all this time, it was for the good of the Bright Heart.

It had to be.

“Lady,” he said softly.

She shook her head in denial—of what he could never be certain.

There was so much that he wanted to ask her.

She shook her head again, forestalling him.

“Latham, what if you knew that there was only one hope to end this eternal war? What would you give up for that hope?”

“Anything,” he said automatically. But the word hung tautly between them, and he stiffened as if feeling its significance truly for the first time.

“And what if you knew that that hope was no certainty, that you were grasping at a slim chance that you could not control? What would you give up then?”

This time he did not answer. Instead he stared across at her bowed head.

“And what if you knew all this, but knew also that to speak of it fully would doom the hope?”

He was scholar, master scholar of Elliath. The questions that he longed to ask still swirled around his mind chaotically. He contained them, for he knew what his answer to her question must be.

“Lady, I would want to take that hope if that was all I would be given. At any price.” He took a deep breath and released it
shakily, thinking of Kerlinda. Thinking of the manner of the death she had gone to, untrained. “But I would not have the strength. I am mortal, with all that condition entails.”

She looked up, and he saw the blackness of despair shroud her features with loss and guilt.

“I do not believe I will ever be truly immortal again.”

Without knowing why, he reached for her, his arms the stronger of the two for the first time in any memory. He held her, and she allowed herself to mourn as a mother does for the death of a child.

 

This time, Erin was allowed to be present at the ceremony of departure in the somber circle of the vaulted Great Hall. Adults stood on all sides, wearing their grays and their circles and their sorrow equally. Belfas stood beside her and cried all the tears that he knew she would not.

Instead of sneaking into the hall as she had for the other ceremony, she had walked to the front of the gathering. No gray for her, no silver, just the plain brown robes of a student in training. She had never felt so out of place. People made way for her, their expressions a mingling of bitter grief and sympathy.

Kerlinda was given the warrior's departure; her coffin was surrounded by warrior-priests, arms held at ready.

Telvar had asked Erin if she would like to stand. She had refused. If she had not had the strength to stand by her mother when her mother was alive, she had no right to stand by her corpse in any position of honor.

The Lady of Elliath presided over this departure, as she had done over all. But the words that were spoken by her and the Grandfather flitted by Erin's ears without ever touching them. Everything was a dim, gray blur.

She approached the coffin once and looked at what remained of her mother in cold, stiff silence.

I will never forget you.

She did not touch the body.

After the ceremony many people, some that she recognized vaguely and some that she knew well, came up to her to offer her their sympathy. They couldn't know that each word they spoke cut her sharply.

Only the Lady of Elliath seemed to understand, and for this one thing, Erin was grateful.

“Erin.” Katalaan wiped her hands on her apron although they'd been dry since the fourth time she'd done it.

Erin continued to wash the plate, each movement of the rag slow and methodical. Her eyes, wide and glassy, stared into the cooling water.

The baker wondered what she saw there. For three years they had lived together. Not one day in all that time had prepared Kat for this silence, the wall of it cold and hard. Korfel would have been proud of the stoic Lernari spirit that Erin showed. Katalaan hated it.