She ignored Falvír’s weakness and whispered one of her own in a nearly inaudible breath. “Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t frighten me. Looking at him now, it seems like that should be my logical reaction.”
Falvír whispered back, with barely any sound escaping his mouth. “It’s definitely mine.”
She bit back a smile and watched as Liran drew level with her. The Vi`dal made a path for him, straight down the center. He didn’t acknowledge them. His eyes probed hers.
“You are without injury,” he said. A statement. She nodded. His stiff shoulders loosened; the angles of his face softened. He turned to Falvír who had drawn up in regal, dignified bearing, and spouted off what sounded like rapid-fire commands. Falvír nodded, his chestnut hair blowing slightly around his face, his twilight eyes hooded, and turned on his heel, calling behind him to the other elves as he left. They all filed past her one by one, nodding respectfully to her and Liran as they joined the others and melded into the trees like spirits.
Liran turned to her. His blazing, golden-amber eyes were nearly flaming in their intensity. Her face must have shown shock, because he dropped his gaze to the sand as he took a step backward. He closed his eyes, dropping his head wearily down until his chin nearly hit his chest. He suddenly looked . . . vulnerable. Like a mythological figure that had suddenly become mortal.
“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” he said in his husky rasp. “I can’t . . .” He drew in a ragged breath and looked up at her. Everything went still inside of her as she searched his face. There was pain there, and a plea. “I can’t give you what you ask. I hope that one day you’ll understand why. But please, Auri”—his eyes closed again, clenching tightly against the hard planes of his face—“please . . .”
“Please what?”
His eyes opened again, speaking the words that he couldn’t seem to say. Her heartbeat shot forward, thudding madly beneath her breastbone. “Look inside of me,” she whispered. His eyes deepened, searching. She held herself very still, allowing him to find what his eyes told her he desperately needed. When he found it, the muscles of his body unclenched themselves. The taut lines around his eyes and mouth softened. His brow softened. His eyes filled with an emotion that she couldn’t define, somewhere between gratitude and wonder.
The muscles around her stomach trembled, shuddering madly. Her heart beat out a staccato rhythm in her ears as he leaned forward and placed a feather-light kiss against her cheek. “Thank you,” he whispered against it, and then he walked away, melding into the trees where the Vi`dal had disappeared.
Auri watched the small boat pull ashore, wincing as the sand ground against the bottom. Her nerves were completely frayed by this point. She didn’t have the strength to go through another encounter. She turned and slowly headed into the trees as well.
Chapter Seventeen- El`dell
El`ness Nahrral was breathtaking. They had been traveling for several days in silence. Nachal and Dhurmic had joined them with hardly a word. The Vi`dal led them through deep forests with trees so high and so thick they formed a dense, broad canopy that blocked nearly all of the sky above. It was as if they had stepped onto another world rather than a distant isle.
Underneath the thick, green sky, was paradise. Water flowed everywhere Auri looked. Streams, lakes, waterfalls, rivers, they all fed the plants and animals in an ecosystem that was far superior to anything on Terradin. Not that she had seen all of Terradin, of course, but she couldn’t imagine anything better than what her eyes were seeing now.
Liran came up behind her, silent as always. “It’s beautiful isn’t it?”
“I don’t think that word quite covers it,” she replied, looking around her as though she were in a dream. She spotted another deer-like animal gazing at them from the opposite shore of the river. “The animals. They’re different here.”
“They have no fear of being hunted, that’s part of it. The other . . . El`ness Nahrral changes things. Given enough time, it will change you too.”
She looked up at his intent eyes. “For the better?”
He looked away without answering.
A moment later Falvír joined them. He dipped his head respectfully to Liran, and Liran looked away without acknowledgment. This exact sequence of events had happened often over the past few days. Falvír was always respectful, deferential, but Liran just ignored him.
“We are only hours outside of the Elder City. Did you want to stop for a while or keep pushing forward?”
She looked over at Liran who was looking off into the distance with a faraway look in his eyes. She touched his arm to get his attention. He flinched. “Liran?”
He turned. His golden-amber eyes had grown brighter. “The queen will meet you at the tiered waterfalls on the northern edge of the city,” he said with no inflection at all to his raspy voice.
“Alright.” She turned back to Falvír who was still waiting. “We’ll go on ahead. Thank you for escorting us. It was nice getting to know a few of you.”
Falvír smiled, bowed slightly, and walked swiftly away.
Auri watched him go. “Why do you disregard the respect of those who serve under you?”
She turned, waiting for his response. It was a long time in coming. “My life is different now,” he said in a low voice. “I am different now. Becoming a Watcher has changed me too much. I am no longer the person I once was.”
“Better or worse?”
He stared intently into her eyes again before he looked away. “I’ll let you know someday,” he rasped.
She nodded and started forward along the path they had been following toward El`dell, and then stopped and turned when Liran remained where he was. “Aren’t you coming?”
He shook his head. “It would be inappropriate.”
She started to argue that, and then stopped at the expression of mute pain in his eyes. He turned and walked away. She sighed and started forward, grateful that the path was very visible and clear. Her mind was far from where she was headed. It was on what she left behind.
When she reached El`dell, her feet stopped of their own accord, and she looked around her with an awed hunger. Hunger because . . . this was the home that should have been hers. Awe because it was exquisite.
Huge, white trees, each several hundred yards around, formed the support for white archways as far as her eyes could see. The pavilions extended all over the city, one archway flowing gracefully to the next. Vines twisted up the length of them, with a riot of golden-white blossoms covering the thick, green vines.
Although the trees were massive here, they didn’t block the light. And, somehow, the light was different here. It seemed a brighter, cleaner light. Not diffused through thick grey clouds or the smoke or ash that sometimes filled the skies on Terradin. It was pure. Beautiful. It bathed the green city in a sort of haloed glow. The exact physical manifestation of what peace might look like, if given half a chance.
She walked through the pavilions, watching the pure rays of sunlight dance on her skin, illuminating it. When she could tear her eyes away from the odd effect the light had on her skin, she looked around her, hungry for all that she could see.
Adults seemed to be in the minority here; there were mostly adolescent elves. Some were very young, only a few years or so, and others seemed to be only a few years younger than her own age, a score and one. After more than an hour of seeing the same thing repeated again and again, she began to grow faintly uneasy. What had happened to the adults? There were so few. . . The uneasy feeling intensified as the atmosphere surrounding her finally registered. A sadness hovered like fine dew, misting everything and everyone.
Uneasiness burrowed deeper within her; it made her legs move quicker. Before she knew it, she was running, passing them all by with only the dim realization that she was doing so.
She raced through the trellised archways until they led out gracefully to a rocky point at the north-eastern edge of the city. It was covered for miles in waterfalls. They fell in tiers, from the
highest point above—a mix of rock and green, verdant grass melded into a low-slung mountain—down to the river that rushed past her feet. Each tier fell with grace and light. The pure light shimmered through the clear water, throwing rainbows of color into the sky.
In the distance, set on another hill above the one that loomed in front of her, was a dense network of huge, white trees, and in their center was a large structure. From this distance, she could make out archways lining the outside, with much of it open to the sun shining down upon it. Like a castle, but not. An elven castle. One that took the existing surroundings and interweaved them into the structure of the building. Elegant. Beautiful.
She twisted around, looking for the queen, but there was no one in sight. So she sat on one of the boulders and stared at the water passing her by, trying to focus her thoughts. If she had never met Liran, had never seen things through his eyes, she might have been unable to piece things together. But, unfortunately, things were beginning to make a terrible sort of sense. Liran’s reaction on the ship . . . the lack of any adult elves . . . the subdued atmosphere. . . She dropped her head to her shaking hand and covered her eyes. Oh no! Please let it just be my imagination!
“It is not your imagination, dear one. You see things clearly.”
Auri swung her head up in the direction of the voice. On the boulder adjacent to her—a boulder that even now was readjusting itself to fit the contours of the being that sat upon it—was a luminous elf. Her hair was the color of pale gold, and her elegant brows were knit over eyes of clear-blue beauty. Terrible, sad eyes. Her gown was white, with a golden-white rosebud belt cinched around her waist. The gown flowed over her gracefully from the simple, unadorned neckline, past the golden trim at her elegant v-shaped sleeves, all the way down to the simple embroidered hem that fell to just above her bare toes.
Queen Alera.
The rock finished melding to the queen’s form, and she sat regally, gazing at Auri with intense, piercing eyes. They were silent as they stared at each other. The sound of the water, of the wind passing through the midst of the trees, of the children playing in the grass courtyard behind them, of the dying, hollow city quieted. A faint, shimmering glow began to light up the queen’s skin. The quiet became magnified. Thicker.
“You look exactly like your mother,” the queen finally whispered, her voice filling the quiet exactly like a clap of thunder would fill a deathly still night.
“You knew her?”
“Yes. Jenna was my sister. The other half to my soul. My dearest friend.”
It was not something that she had ever been able to do before, but, right then, Auri tried to feel her way past the masked façade that the queen was showing her. Instantly, she felt the terrible sadness. The loss was more than missing someone who was dearly loved, but also a terrible, ripping loss of self. The queen had spoken true.
“My mother was your sister?” she whispered in confusion. She closed her eyes, trying to think. Suddenly, she remembered. A dark-haired elf, standing before two thrones in a room of dappled light and twisting vines. Her regal bearing. Her passion. Her refusal to sit idly by while others suffered. Her confusion and sadness that the being on the throne could.
She opened her eyes, certain that her intuition was right. That elf had been her mother. She had belonged, had that soul-deep authority, because she was next in line for the throne. She hadn’t been challenging the monarchy; she had been challenging her sister. And she had been heartbroken that her sister would sit and do nothing while others suffered. That her sister wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t help.
She rose, fury filling her chest with heat. “You abandoned her! She asked for your help, and you refused.” She was trembling. Trembling in fear. In anger. In pain. “How could you leave all of those people to die? How could you abandon them? They needed you. They still need you.” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “She needed you.” Her voice went completely hoarse as the tears finally spilled past her lashes.
Alera didn’t offer any excuses. “Yes.”
Auri looked down, away from the intensity of the queen’s eyes, and closed her own, fighting for control. “Elves are supposed to care for the lands,” she whispered. “At the very least, they are supposed to care for one another. What kind of being does these things and feels no remorse?”
The queen laughed. The cold sound—coming from such beauty—was a sort of desecration. “Your beliefs are naïve,” she said harshly.
Auri’s head snapped up. “She was my mother. She was your sister!” she shouted. “What kind of person are you that you could do such things?”
The boulder rose, and Alera stood. “I am the person who is trying to save the world, Aurelias,” she said quietly, “hard as that may be for you to understand. The person who is trying to save my people. The person who is fighting it all, holding it all together by the autonomy of my being.” Her voice went deeper, not in pitch but in intensity. It struck down to the marrow of Auri’s bones, sinking into every fibrous tissue within her, echoing inside the caverns of her soul with some mystical power. “I loved her. More than you can possibly know. I miss her every day, every hour, and whether you choose to believe me or not, it breaks my heart that she never got the chance to know you.”
Auri was still standing, dragging deep, choking breaths into her lungs, fighting the urge to sit down on the boulder behind her and sob for everything that was lost. For the pain that racked her. For the pain and anguish that she saw in the queen. For a dying world.
“She saw something worth fighting for. Are the people of Terradin so far removed from you here? Are they not worth saving?”
Alera went to stand at the very edge of the water. It rose and danced in front of her, twisting through the air like an acrobat, spinning and hurtling itself across the expanse of waves that lapped gently at the shore. She lifted a hand into the air and it settled, becoming only crystal-clear water once more. “I am trying to save them, Aurelias,” she said quietly.
Auri laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “How? By saving yourself?”
Alera turned sharply. “Yes.”
Auri laughed again; tears coursed down her face. “You are not the world, Alera. You are hiding here where death cannot touch you. You are a coward.”
Alera flamed. Her hair glowed like molten gold. Her eyes lit like blue fire. “Where death cannot touch me?” she whispered, stricken. Gaunt lines deepened against her face. Her cheeks sunk in, as if their fullness had been merely an illusion before. She shrunk, becoming diminutive, becoming hollow. “Follow me,” she ordered harshly.
They climbed. Wolf—Auri only just realized that he was with them—followed them. They climbed the face of the low-slung mountain in front of them by a path that twisted and wound along the far side. Water cascaded past them, crisscrossing the path and drowning out every other sound. When they reached the top, they came out on the opposite side. Wolf stood with her as they looked at the water rushing past them. It flowed from a wide river far to the north. East of the river was a series of archway paths, just like the ones below. Alera walked quickly, quietly, through the arched trellis paths. Her white gown billowed out behind her, trailing whisperingly along the shadowed walkway.
Inside the trellis archways were pavilions. Pavilions that were filled almost overflowing with the sick and the dying. The smell of decay hit Auri’s nostrils hard, involuntarily forcing her to stagger backward a step. When she recovered, she lowered her hand and kept it firmly at her side. The elves in the room—those few that had enough strength left to lift their heads—turned to stare at them. Immediately some held their hands up in supplication, and the queen went swiftly over to them, giving them comfort, giving them hope, touching them with the light that fell softly from her now like the dying rays of the sun. Auri swallowed.
The queen turned, and her voice was like a whipcord across Auri’s mind. She flinched from the pain as it flayed into her. I see the suffering, Aurelias. My days are filled with the suffering of my
people. My nights are filled with the suffering of the land. My heart burns. My soul aches. I cannot stop this.
“Who can?” Auri whispered with barely a breath of air. She knew that the queen would hear.
You.
Auri flinched again. She? She looked away from the intensity of her aunt’s eyes.
Follow me. There is something that I want you to witness.
She followed Alera again through yet more passageways. The golden-white blossomed canopies above smelled like a profusion of richly scented life; the pavilions to their left like all-encompassing death. El`ness Nahrral was dying. The reason that children roamed the cities was because there were few mature elves anymore. The older, the weaker, were dying first, and then would come. . . She looked down at the path; tears dripped down her face. And then would come the children. She put a shaking hand to her stomach. Sickness smoldered.
Alera stopped ahead of her, briefly letting her catch up, and then she wove her way through the stone courtyard, avoiding the—Air hissed out of Auri’s chest; she felt herself sway.
Avoiding the dead.
She stared around her in horror, small, broken sounds escaping her lips. Her breath sped up. The sickness smoldering in the pit of her stomach intensified. She turned around and dropped to her knees to throw up. Suddenly, Liran’s arms came around her. He drew her gently to her feet when her stomach had emptied, and held her. His face was shattered and hollow. His eyes burned into hers.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he whispered.
“You knew,” she whimpered, closing her eyes. “This was what Drashmere told you on the ship.”
She felt his hand on her face, cradling it. “Yes,” he rasped.
His hand took hers, gently drawing her over to a low stone wall on the far side of the courtyard. He drew her down to sit next to him. His body was tense now. Expectant. His burning eyes focused intently on Alera and then flashed to the entrance of the courtyard. To the person who stepped hesitantly in and then looked around the stone enclosure in horror.