Firebrand

• • •

Scoured and clean-shaven, he returned to the camp feeling more himself than he had in months, but for the buckskin he wore. He was greeted by Fiori at the fire.

“I almost do not recognize you without whiskers, my lord,” Fiori said.

Zachary smiled. It felt strange to have air caressing his bare cheeks. “It will grow back, but I felt a need to remove what was there.”

As the day went on, he sat by the fire trying to relax. Nari soon joined him.

“I will be leaving in the morning,” she said, “to resume my hunt for Slee. With winter melting away, Slee will dissipate and be more difficult to find.”

Zachary wondered about the wisdom of hunting down the elemental and asked, “What will you do if you find it?”

She turned her stormy gaze on him. He found it unsettling.

“Slee already senses my wrath,” she said.

Seeking vengeance seemed very unEletianlike to Zachary, but then he knew too little of the Eletians to offer judgment. He had known Nari long enough to be surprised, however, for she’d always been so calm and level. But then again, it was not always easy to discern what turbulence existed beneath the serene surface of a lake.

“I also seek friends,” she said in a distracted voice, and then she drifted away.

Friends? Zachary wondered. What friends?

“Nari is one of the very old ones,” Enver told him as he watched after her, “and of another time. Most her age Sleep.”

“She once told me she tended the grove by Castle Argenthyne.”

“Yes, but much that she once knew has changed in the world while she was captive and away from her people. Much was lost. I believe she seeks not vengeance, not even justice.”

“What, then?”

“Completion.”

“Completion?”

“Yes, of her story.”

That sounded so very final to Zachary.

Enver gazed steadily at him and said, “Do not underestimate one such as Nari. If the aureas slee is wounded, as she suspects, then as one of the old ones, she is its match.”

Zachary wished her well then, but was sorry that she’d be leaving them.

Later, when Estral came to sit by the fire, he asked, “Now that you have found your father, will you be returning south?”

“Not yet, Your Majesty.” She glanced toward Enver’s tent. “I feel responsible for what was done to Karigan. If I hadn’t . . .” She swallowed hard and shuddered as though to shake away bad memories. “I think I should stay to help her in what little way I can. I will return south when she does.”

Zachary nodded. She had told him earlier how she and Karigan had been captured by Second Empire. Though Estral was not to blame for the cruelty Nyssa had inflicted, she would live with the guilt for her own part in Karigan’s capture and torture for a long time to come. Ironically, had she not run off into the Lone Forest in search of her father, Karigan might have never found him and Fiori in the keep, and the two of them could still be there enduring who-knew-what. However, he’d have endured anything if it meant sparing Karigan.

In the night, Nari spelled Enver and sat with the Galadheon. The young woman slept peacefully, though Nari knew this was not usually the case. Even when she was away from the Galadheon, she could sense the dark turbulence of her dreams and memories, and not all of them were rooted in her recent experience with the Nyssa woman. She was haunted.

Nari also detected a shimmer about her that was a mark of favor from her sister. It was the light of Laurelyn, the lingering phosphorescence of some ancient silver moon that had once shone over Argenthyne. The glow had faded, and it would continue to fade, but would not, she thought, extinguish entirely.

Zachary had told her something of how Laurelyn had drawn the Galadheon to her to aid the Sleepers, and Enver had told her more. Laurelyn had always possessed the gift of seeing long and manipulating events to a purpose. But she had not been able to see all, certainly not Nari’s abduction by the aureas slee.

Nari was certain her love, Hadwyr, had searched relentlessly for her, and Laurelyn had, too, but even Hadwyr, with his lore of the wild, and Laurelyn, with all her sight and power, had not been able to find her. It had taken the arrival of Zachary and the gryphons to liberate her.

She considered the Galadheon, her wounded back, its rise and fall with each of her breaths. She’d adversaries, it was clear, and other entities used her, as Enver had put it, who were not necessarily her allies. The ability to cross thresholds, to walk the liminal line, was rare, and these others, even Nari’s sister, took advantage where they could: the god of death, the Mirari, her own people. The Galadheon’s adversaries would also take advantage if they became aware of what she was able to do.

I have not the power of my sister, nor am I a healer, but I am thankful to the Galadheon for what she has done for my people, especially those I once tended in the grove. It had taken courage and sacrifice.

She decided to give the Galadheon a gift in return. Nari had her own journey to complete, and that which she had carried within during her captivity, that which had sustained her, was no longer needed. It would only end when she did. Better to pass it on as a gift.

She laid her hand on the Galadheon’s head. The young woman’s eyelashes fluttered, but she did not awaken. Nari summoned the gift, her own piece of Argenthyne that she’d hidden deep inside, away from Slee’s prying, away from all those who’d been imprisoned with her. Even Enver had been unable, as far as she could tell, to detect it.