“When we reach Caarn, you cannot sleep outside my door,” she said gently. Her hair smelled of roses, but violet darkened the hollows beneath her eyes, and he knew he was not the only one who worried.
“Everyone on this ship knows I’m in love with you,” he answered. “They all heard the bans read in Jeru City, they all know what was between us and what was snatched away. Do you not see their pitying looks and their curious gazes? They all know. I would stay away to protect your honor. But I can’t do that. I can’t do that and protect you.”
“I know. But it is one thing to unknowingly betray, it is another to willfully betray,” Sasha said.
“Yes. It is,” he agreed. “When we reach Caarn, you must tell King Aren everything. He can’t be the only one who doesn’t know.”
“I will tell him,” she whispered brokenly. “I betray him by loving you, and I betray you by returning to him.”
“You owe me nothing. There is no betrayal if there is no treachery. I know why I am here, and it is not to challenge the king,” he said.
“My conscience demands that I acknowledge you. My duty demands that I deny you,” Sasha said. “That feels like betrayal. Of myself. Of you. Of King Aren. And I don’t know how to rectify it.”
He was quiet, letting her find her composure, seeking his own understanding. He answered with the first thing that came to his head.
“Some things cannot be healed. They must simply be endured,” he whispered, and grimaced. It was the truth, but it sounded like something Tiras would say, something that the old Kjell would have raged against, simply because endurance signified an acceptance of pain. He wanted to defeat suffering. Not live with it.
Sasha didn’t answer, as if she too had trouble accepting it, but she took his hand the way she used to do, helping him endure. She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, but she didn’t let go. They stayed that way for a long time, leaning against opposing walls but facing each other, knees touching, hands clasped. He thought she was asleep, but she spoke again.
“He will want you to leave, Captain. Aren is a good man. A kind man. But he is still a man, and he will not want you in Caarn.” She spoke so softly, he knew the words were difficult for her to say.
“Then I will go,” he reassured. And he would. But he would slay Ariel of Firi first.
The road to Caarn was indeed paved with neatly placed rocks—mile after mile of them—and Kjell drove himself mad seeing trouble beneath each one.
On the second day they skirted a river, the water sweet and cold with a waterfall high enough to stand beneath, providing natural showers for the travelers to wash. The ladies, all three of them, went first, and the men withdrew, giving them the privacy necessary. He wanted to forbid Sasha, to insist she stay by his side, but instead walked, fully-clothed except for his boots, beneath the spray and averted his eyes from the three women, who laughed and talked, their teeth chattering, and their bathing brief.
When he couldn’t see Sasha, he made sure he could hear her, and asked that she humor him by keeping a running commentary when his back was turned or she was out of his sight. He knew some of the travelers and even many of his own men thought him overzealous. He didn’t care. They didn’t know what he knew. Everything was a threat. A lizard, delicate and apple green, darted through the grass, and Kjell’s heart seized. Without thought he threw his blade, skewering the little beast. He watched it die, waiting for the change that would occur at death if it wasn’t in its true form. But it remained a lizard, its limbs growing brittle, its color fading as life fled. Kjell chopped it into pieces, ignoring the voice in his head that told him he was being obsessive. He’d watched Ariel of Firi play dead before, lying still and compliant, an eagle snared by a Jeruvian poacher. When the danger had passed, she had simply flown away.
He was going to have to kill her. He knew that. He couldn’t live with the constant threat to those he loved and to the people around him. At some point, he was going to have to concoct a plan to rid the world of Ariel of Firi. But until they reached Caarn, until he knew what they faced and what steps could be taken, he could only be vigilant and pray that her purposes, whatever they were, were not focused on the queen . . . at least not yet.
When they began to descend into the valley on the afternoon of the second day, the travelers grew lively and Kjell courted a sense of doom. Sasha walked beside him, her eyes gobbling up the countryside, lingering on the trees, touching the sky, reminiscing and reconnecting as they approached the end of the road and the dawn of never again. But the road ended in a mass of brambles and a wall of trees so high and thick, the travelers stopped and gaped.
The forest had grown over the road.
Jerick withdrew his sword, and some of Kjell’s men followed suit, preparing to cut an opening in the wooded obstruction.
“It will take more than swords to tunnel through that, Jerick,” Kjell said.
“Put your swords away. We will ask them to move,” the Spinner sniffed, placing his twitching fingers upon the tree in the center of the road. He smoothed the trunk like it was the hair of a beloved child and laid his grey head against it, beseeching.
“I am Padrig of Caarn. My nephew is King Aren. My blood is of Caarn, my heart and loyalty are to Caarn. Pray you, let us pass,” he boomed.
The tree seemed to hear, even to awaken, but though it stretched its branches and shifted its weight, it remained directly in their path, blocking the road into the valley of Caarn. Padrig tried again, pleading with the trunk of the tree to do as he bade, but the tree continued to guard the way.
The group waited, breaths drawn, watching the shivering trees who in turn seemed to be watching them.
“Can anyone ask it to move?” Jerick asked. “Or just Padrig?”
“Anyone can ask. But most people don’t. Most people just draw their swords and start hacking away,” Padrig snapped, caressing the bark as if trying to woo compliance. He seemed stunned that he could not convince the wooded wall to open.
“Pardon me, leafy mistress. I would like to pass.” Jerick bowed gallantly, drawing laughter from the travelers.
“It takes a bit more than a polite request, Padrig,” Sasha corrected the Spinner. “Yes, Jerick, anyone can ask. But the trees will not answer or obey. It takes the blood of Caarn and pure intentions to command a tree to move. We all have the best of intentions . . . but Padrig is the only one here who has the blood of Caarn flowing in his veins.”
Padrig moved to the next tree and to the next, coaxing and cajoling, and though the trees inched and quaked, listening to him plead, the road remained impassable.
“No one doubts your blood, Spinner. But maybe the problem lies with your intentions,” Kjell observed and placed his hands against the tree, mocking Padrig’s posture but not his tone. He would not beg, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. They had not come all this way to be denied now.
“I am Kjell of Jeru. Bloody move so we can pass,” he grumbled. The branches of the tree Kjell touched began to lift skyward, separating from the boughs of the tree next to it. Straightening and stretching, a narrow divide opened between the two center trunks.
Jerick hooted in amazement. “Even the trees are afraid of you, Captain!”
“Who are you, Healer?” Padrig gasped. “You . . . y-you . . . must carry the blood of Caarn.”
“I am Kjell of Jeru, Spinner. And you are trying my patience.” The others gaped at him, awestruck and open-mouthed. “I have never set foot in Dendar before, much less Caarn.”
“Impossible. Do it again!” Padrig insisted.
Kjell, too dazed and curious to be contrary, repeated his request on another tree, though this time he didn’t curse. “I am Kjell of Jeru. We need to see to the welfare of the people in this valley. Please let us pass.”
The ground began to quake, and the cobbled road began to split and crack. The tree Kjell addressed started to withdraw its roots—great tentacles coated in dirt—and climb from the earth, dragging itself free from the broken r
oad and widening the gap in the forest wall, clearing the way before them.
“Your father was Zoltev, Captain, but who was your mother?” Sasha asked, her shock as evident as Padrig’s.
“My mother was a servant woman in my father’s castle. She died at my birth.”
“And where was she from?” Padrig asked, reasserting himself as interrogator.
“Nowhere. No one. I know nothing of her but her name.”
“And what was her name?” Padrig pressed.
Kjell regarded the Spinner in exasperation. The man knew too much and thought he was entitled to know more.
“Her name is not your concern,” Kjell answered.
“And you are certain she was not of Caarn?” Padrig pressed.
“I know only what I was told.” Kjell barked, impatient and uncomfortable. The trees were gone, but the roots left huge holes in the road, and Kjell turned to the men listening attentively to the exchange.
“The way is open, but the wagons still cannot pass. Let’s fill the holes and replace the rocks,” Kjell commanded, changing the subject from his mother and her origins.
A man named Jedah stepped forward and touched his shoulder. He’d signed on for the journey to Dendar claiming he was Gifted, but Kjell had yet to see what he could do beyond catching chickens with Isak.
“Let me be of use, Captain,” he offered. With fluttering fingers and the palms of his hands, he scooped the air as if scooping the ground, and the displaced dirt obeyed his summons, rushing to return to mother earth, the sound like pounding rain against the sand. “I can’t command the rocks,” he apologized. “But the holes are filled.”
“Well done, Earth Mover. That is not a gift I’ve seen before,” Kjell marveled.
“It is not a gift that has proven especially valuable.” Jedah shrugged.
“In a land of growers, such a gift will be greatly appreciated,” Sasha said. “It is a form of Telling. Don’t command the rocks, tell the dirt to move them,” she suggested.
Jedah looked doubtful, but scooped his hands through the air again, his brow furrowed, his gaze narrowed on one of the displaced cobbles. It rattled and flipped, and he smiled in triumph.
“Keep practicing, Jedah,” Kjell said, but began to move the stones into place. There would be time for practice later. They worked quickly, replacing the rocks and leveling the way so the wagons could pass.
Once they’d crossed through the opening in the wall, the earth groaned, the roots crawled, the branches snapped, and the hedge of trees resumed their positions, blocking the road and displacing the dirt and rocks all over again.
Kjell’s men eyed each other nervously, and the travelers began to murmur among themselves. Now they couldn’t leave if they wanted to. Kjell couldn’t decide if he was comforted by the barrier or unnerved by it. If the Changer followed, she need only become a bird to breech the trees. But if the trees had created a wall, there was something worth protecting in Caarn.
They kept moving forward, unable to do anything else, but more than a few glances were tossed back toward the barrier and up into the canopy that lined the road. The wind whispered through the leaves, but there was no bird-song or animal chatter. In Jeru City, the chickens cackled in the courtyard and the bullfrogs sang a chorus in the castle moat each night. Kjell had cursed the cacophony on more than one occasion, but he found he missed the reassurance that came with sound. Absolute silence could not be equated with peace. More often than not, it portended terrible things. He found himself checking the skies, expecting a Volgar swarm. But none came, and the silence persisted.
Then, just around the next bend, the castle came into view, nestled in a sea of green so intense the white rock of the walls glowed in comparison. It didn’t sit on a hill like the palace in Jeru, but in the center of the valley, the hub of a wheel, just as Padrig had described. The village huddled around it, hundreds of pale toadstools on the forest floor, and the ribbon of the road they traveled angled down toward it, pointing to the end of their journey.
Kjell remembered the way the trumpets had sounded the day he returned to Jeru City, Sasha seated in front of him on Lucian, his heart ebullient. No trumpets sounded or flags waved welcoming them to Caarn. Maybe they hadn’t been seen. Maybe they simply needed to draw closer. Or maybe no one was expecting the triumphant return of a long-absent queen. As they descended toward the village, no people rushed out into the street to greet—or gawk at—the wary parade of foreigners who peered through the trees at the quiet cottages, the empty gardens, and the untended orchards. It was the Bay of Dendar all over again, but as they neared the castle, the trees became so thick they could no longer see anything but the palace gate and a looming guard tower.
The drawbridge was down, the portcullis raised, and unlike the trees at the border that had made them ask for entry, no watchman at the gate demanded they identify themselves. The travelers walked into the palace courtyard, unabated and undeterred, and stood, searching for life and further instruction.
***
“Where is everyone, Padrig?” Sasha asked, her eyes trained on the piles of leafy debris and the detritus of neglect in the castle courtyard. She began to walk, calling out a greeting that would never be answered.
“Where is everyone?” she repeated, her voice more strident, her horror evident.
“I’m not entirely . . . sure,” Padrig answered, his face stricken, his brow drawn. But his gaze shifted the way it had when he’d promised Sasha she would lose nothing when he restored her memories. He was telling half-truths again.
Sasha began striding toward the wide castle doors, and Kjell rushed to pursue her, throwing instructions over his shoulder to his guard.
“Search the keep, but do so in groups, just like we did in the bay. And Jerick and Isak, stay with the Spinner.”
The doors were not barred or barricaded. Kjell and Sasha raised the looped iron knockers and pulled them wide, walking inside as if they belonged, as if the silence longed to be filled. Sasha did belong, Kjell reminded himself. He could picture her there, walking down the corridors, sewing in the light of the huge glass windows, her tongue caught between her teeth, looking out at the trees and the hills, seeing a future she couldn’t have dreamed.
She belonged at Caarn.
She had reigned in the Great Room hung with lacy cobwebs and walked the endless marble floors that now coated the hem of her gown with a pale powder, the color of the white rock that formed the castle walls. The table in the king’s dining hall was set for a feast that had never happened, and Sasha approached it, fingering the coated silver and the pewter goblets. Sasha’s chair would have been at the far end, the one inset with a tree, supported by dainty legs and carved with more feminine lines.
They left one room and entered another, a gallery of sorts, draped with flags and woven tapestries. One window above an ornate wall hanging had been shattered at some point, and glass crunched beneath their feet. The beam showed signs of dampness beneath the broken pane, but the tapestries had maintained their color, if somewhat dulled by dust.
They walked through the enormous kitchens, past the cold hearths and dangling fire irons and pots and pans. Only dirt marred the surfaces. Everything was in order, as if great preparation had been made for an extended absence. From the kitchens, Sasha led the way into a garden filled with plants that needed tending and rose bushes that were thorny and cross, their bite exceeding their unkempt beauty. Lining the garden were rows of trees laden with fruit of every kind, the rotted carcasses of the fallen apples, peaches, and pears giving the space an over-ripe stench that reminded Kjell of perfumed lords at a stifling soiree.
“There was no one here to eat the fruit or tend my trees,” Sasha mourned.
Kjell plucked an apple from a branch above his head and found it covered with holes. He pitched it over the pale rock wall and reached for another that was without blemish. He bit into it and savored the burst of flavor against his tongue, but when he went to take another bite, he saw the remains of
half a worm. His stomach turned, and he tossed the second apple the way of the first.
“Which fruit is forbidden?” he asked.
Sasha shook her head, not understanding. “None of them.”
“Did King Aren plant this garden for his young queen?” he asked. “Or was that simply a story? I seem to remember a forbidden tree and a devious snake in that tale.”
“You are angry,” she said, perplexed.
“I am afraid,” he admitted. “Your stories have all proven to be real.”
She turned in a circle as if she couldn’t quite match her memories with the neglect and didn’t deny his claim.
“It is different than I remember. The landscape is overgrown, the castle abandoned. There aren’t even any bones,” she whispered.
There were animal bones here and there. But there were no Volgar or human bones. Kjell had noticed as well.
They joined the others in the courtyard, noting the listless travelers and the tired guard. The sailors were already talking about returning to the ship. Captain Lortimer wanted to turn back the following day.
“There is nothing here, Captain,” he complained. “Our ship waits in the harbor. It will be close quarters, but there are sufficient supplies—especially considering what we found in Dendar Bay. Everyone wants to go home.”
Padrig returned to the courtyard, Jerick and Isak trailing him, and caught the tail end of Lortimer’s speech.
“We cannot leave. Not yet,” Padrig cried. “I know where they are. I know what has happened. They are there.” He pointed to the groves that hugged the four castle walls and peered down at them, the oddest collection of trees to ever grow side by side, few of them the same variety, none of them uniform in height or spacing.
Lortimer laughed and a few sailors joined him. But Sasha didn’t laugh.