Her fears proved groundless. The dogs pulled in their harnesses as always, panting and lolling their tongues without the slightest break in their stride. Tenlar charged forward, not daring to stop, yet Telai felt only a hint of despair seeping into her mind. Afterward they stopped for a brief rest, more for their teams than anything else, then started off again.
♦
The lofty canopy blotted out the sky, and evening fell so swiftly they were forced to camp only a mile or so inside the forest. Telai started a fire and prepared their meal while Tenlar fed the dogs and set up the tent.
“Do you have any idea which way to go, or what to look for?” Tenlar asked as he finished.
Telai kept her attention on the fire, stirring a small iron pot of
gytorgva
hanging over the coals. “Other than what Ksoreda told us, you mean?” She shrugged. “There’s the legend started by the Treth about a large fortress, rumored to lie deep in the forest. It’s part of the reason they’ve never settled any town north of Outway.”
“Humph. Sounds more like superstition than reality.” After a pause he asked, “No one’s ever been there to find out?”
“Of course not, or it wouldn’t be such a mystery! Besides, it’s just an old wives’ tale, handed down through the years. The Treth certainly have a knack for spreading tall tales,” she muttered, remembering that storekeeper in Waystop.
“Well, if someone
was
there, it must have been a long time ago.”
“I suppose.”
Tenlar shuffled his feet, then scratched the back of his head. “Telai, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Here, eat.”
She handed him a plateful of stew. They ate without speaking, with only the crackle of flames and the occasional yawn of a dog interrupting the silence. Afterward they inspected their animals for signs of injury or disease, mending any broken or frayed harnesses as they worked.
At last they finished. Telai sat near the fire, Slink at her side as always.
Tenlar shifted position, sitting cross-legged on a deerskin blanket, his back against his sled. “I’m certainly not the expert in lore you are.”
She lifted her gaze to where his face wavered in the rising heat. “What?”
“I’m only saying that when it comes to matters of lore and history, you’re the leader on this mission. So I understand if you need to work out a few things for yourself.”
She parted her mouth briefly, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Hendra’s sake. I’m not trying to ignore you! This place unsettles me, that’s all.”
“Well, of course. It affected Lord Soren and the others the same way.”
Telai studied the flames again. “No. It’s something more, like—” she began, then shook her head.
Tenlar waited. “Well? Like what?”
“I’m not sure. It’s like they don’t belong here any more than we do.”
“They?”
She glared at him. “The trees!”
Tenlar blinked at her. “I see. Trees that don’t belong in a forest.”
Telai yanked her blankets from the sled and snapped to her feet. “Tenlar, if you’re going to be an oaf about this, don’t make a pretense of offering to help.”
She headed for the tent. “You’re right,” said Tenlar, stopping her. “But I had to get you to talk. There’s a puzzle to be solved here, and two heads are better than one—even when one of them is mine.”
Telai hesitated, then resumed her seat. “All right, then: just what do you suggest?”
“Simply this. As strange as this place is, maybe you shouldn’t resist what it’s trying to tell you.”
Telai did not answer at once. Suddenly she jumped: Slink had shoved his nose under her arm, begging for attention. She smiled faintly and let him lay his head in her lap, lost in thought again as she rubbed the thick gray fur behind his ears.
“There’s some ancient tragedy connected to this forest,” she said. “Like a memory, only buried deep.”
“Urmanaya?”
“Older than that, even. I have no idea what it could be, though.” Telai squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to clear her mind of the sensation.
“You’re afraid of what it might reveal?”
“Yes. There are secrets here better left undiscovered.”
“No one wants that more than I do, Telai. But we’ve come too far for that—not after Graxmoar, and Gebi.”
“I know that, Tenlar. But I have to work this out in my own way.”
She wrapped her blanket tight, shifting position with an unmistakable air of finality. Tenlar sighed and let the matter be, but Telai knew he was determined to bring it up again.
They retired at last. Tenlar dropped off at once, but Telai struggled, tossing this way and that in a vain search to get comfortable. The dark of the tent only intensified her anxiety, and she kept hearing or imagining sounds or voices. Hours passed, each more frustrating and unnerving than the one before, until finally she grabbed her coat and crept toward the entrance.
She heard Tenlar stirring. “Where are you going?” he murmured.
“I can’t believe you just asked that. Girls can’t aim it out the door, you know.”
“You went out only a short while ago.”
“Keeping track of my personal habits now? How charming.”
“Telai, will you stop that? I won’t be of any use on this mission if you keep shutting me out.”
“Fine. I can’t sleep. I thought I’d try outside by the fire.”
“It’s black as ink out there. Need help lighting it?”
She peeked through the opening. “There are a few coals burning yet.”
“Keep Slink close by. There’s no telling—”
“Great Hendra!” she cried. “You sound just like that stuffy old nanny my mother hired when I was little. Stop fretting and go back to sleep.” She crawled through the flap before he could muster another word.
The embers barely illuminated anything close by, let alone farther out, and it took a bit of searching to locate the small stack of wood they had gathered. But in time she had a bright little fire going to stave off the oppressive gloom. Telai dropped a few more branches into the flames, then wrapped herself in blankets again and sat cross-legged against the sled.
She kept expecting Tenlar to come out and check on her. He was so obvious—using his duty as protector to disguise his feelings. How long was he going to keep fooling himself? He lost her heart years ago, and she was no longer the desperate girl he once knew.
A massive tree rose beyond the bright flames; up, up it soared, its craggy skin vanishing into darkness. If any woodsman’s saw could ever bring down one of these behemoths it would be a terrible crime, like a king murdered at the height of his wisdom and strength. But Telai knew they were not kings. They were prisoners, ageless souls powerless to escape their majestic tombs.
She sighed. Tenlar was right. If she was to ever learn the secret of Tnestiri and find any hope for her people, she needed to listen to whatever this place was trying to tell her.
Telai flexed her limbs one by one, breathing deep, slow breaths, relaxing her body to help purge all fears and distractions. The snap and pop of burning wood faded. The voices grew, somehow lending strength to her clairvoyant powers. Words unbidden came to her mind, a timeless whisper from ancient days, moving her lips in silent accord:
“
Anré té va yaté, ota dé! Anid es av itée atré fdar
á
. Ota, ota! Yru kala onéi.
”
Her eyes were already closed, as if a will outside her own had commanded it. A vast host appeared, countless generations lost in an everlasting void. They were beautiful, men and women alike, showing no sign of age or imperfection. Yet the dearth of hope in their faces had existed for lifetimes beyond imagining.
The endless tide of minds whispered in her thoughts, beckoning her. Trembling, she followed.
The host vanished. A pale light bloomed, spreading everywhere, banishing the darkness. A gentle wind caressed her skin. She breathed deep, reveling in the fragrance of spring growth. Stronger and stronger the light grew, until at last the vision cleared.
Telai stood barefoot in the midst of a rolling plain, a wide stretch of grassland decorated in a stunning palette of wildflowers. Children ran in all directions, their hair bouncing with each stride, laughter piping in her ears like music. She raised her arm to shield the sun—and saw not her own flesh but the soft, slender limb of a young girl.
She was the oldest by several years, drowning in the pungent aroma of wild growth, in the dance of her long black hair. She wiggled her toes, laughing. She had never felt grass like this before. No one had created it. No power of the mind, no artificial simulation, nothing but the sun and the rain and the soil. It was a world that had never known the curse of technology, never been touched by anyone from the stars—until today.
“Lovely, isn’t it?”
A grown woman stood at her side. She gazed out over the rolling landscape, her beauty enhanced by a poignant little smile. Her posture, the closeness of her stance, even the slight movement of her hands spoke of a bond only a mother could possess. But the emptiness in her eyes told a different story—not of love but of everlasting grief, as if her heart had been broken so long ago she couldn’t remember feeling any other way.
The young girl knew they shouldn’t be here. She didn’t care. Ever since she was little she had longed for this paradise, to experience what it must have been like for those privileged few children so long ago. She had pleaded and cajoled like only a thirteen-year-old could, until at last her mother relented, hoping to bring a few moments of joy to her charge of troubled girls. Now they were here, their cloaked ship landing in the remotest section of the planet, an ocean away from where the descendants of those forgotten children lived.
Laughter drifted along the breeze, weaving a spell of contentment in the girl’s heart. Her friends did not sound very troubled to her.
The woman sighed in regret, an unmistakable premonition, sabotaging joy. “We have to leave.”
“Not now—it’s too soon!”
“You know what kind of risk we’re taking. The longer we stay, the more likely we’ll be found out.”
“Why? I thought you cloaked us.”
“We already talked about this, Hendra. Even another hour will only make it harder.”
Her mother stepped forward, calling to the girls. Hendra watched for a moment, then folded her gangly limbs and sank to the ground. A short wildflower grew nearby, its tiny yellow blossoms half hidden in the grass. Mournful protests and sad cries reached her ears, but she ignored them. There was only the little flower, and its desperate struggle to reach the sun.
A pair of legs interrupted her vision. One heedless foot trampled her dream into the sod.
Her mother knelt in front of her, hand extended. “It’s time.”
The girl kept her head lowered, her gut churning as if witnessing the death of a close friend. “No,” she whispered.
“You know it’s impossible, Hendra.”
The child glared up at her, trembling with resentment. “You don’t understand—you
have
to let us stay.”
The woman withdrew her hand. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” she muttered, as if to herself. She rose, stepped a short distance away, then faced her daughter again. Her brow furrowed. A faint, greenish-blue glow flowed up her arm, lacing the air with tendrils of light.
The girl’s legs twitched. She clenched her jaw, determined to fight a war of wills. But mortal flesh was far too weak against the power of the mind. Her muscles contracted, slowly gaining force, until she stood, her arms and fists shaking with rage.
“You can’t take us back! I won’t—”
Hendra’s voice faltered: something was pressing against the inside of her palm. She opened her hand, and smiled.
Her parents had inserted a cybernetic governor in her mind before activating her device, a practice required by law. Yet the device had appeared instantly in her hand, defying all logic, as if some unbidden force had willed it into place.
No one has ever done this before.
She gripped the device, its dark surface glistening in the sun. “We’ll go back when
I
say.”
“Hendra!”
“I mean it!”
The woman’s lips parted. Then they tightened in concentration.
Hendra’s thoughts wandered. The wide, cloud-flecked sky spun in her eyes; her skin tingled, and she no longer felt the wind on her face.
A bright web of light from her hand blotted it out in an instant.
“NO!”
The woman flew backwards and landed with a grunt in the tall grass. She lay recovering, then lifted herself on her elbows, shaking her head.
Hendra’s device shone a brilliant green, tendrils of power twining about her hand, creeping up her arm. How easy it was!—as if her anger and desperation had erased the last barrier. She knew her consciousness was forever trapped inside this black prison, that her body was only a shell now. Yet the power surging through her flesh—a power shocking in its intensity—promised a freedom too great to resist.
Her mother rose to her feet. “Hendra,” she whispered, her voice nearly lost in the breeze. “Please don’t fight me. Something’s happened to your governor. Your mind hasn’t been trained to control that kind of power yet.”
For one brief moment she hesitated, her mother’s fear dampening her confidence. But the warm rays of the sun, the wind caressing the gossamer-fine hair of her skin, sent an ache into her heart too powerful to ignore. For the first time in her life, she knew what it meant to be truly human.
I can’t go back. I can never go back.
She closed her hand around her possession with desperate strength. The prospect of returning to that empty life terrified her. And the Lor’yentré transformed that terror into reality.
Her mother—the same woman who had nursed her, scolded her, soothed every hurt of her body and ache of her heart—released a scream so utterly primal and inhuman that Hendra scrambled backwards in horror. Then that perfect vision of life and love burst apart before her staring eyes.
Blood and bones and entrails ripped from each other as if enemies of the body they once shared. A thick rain fell, flattening the grass. The flowers that had once danced as if for joy now sank lifeless beneath its weight.