Lord of Souls: An Elder Scrolls Novel (41 page)

Annaïg twitched the reins of her dappled gray mare and enjoyed the play of light and shadow in the forest around her. Attrebus rode a few feet away. It was strange to be with him, to see him, and to be silent; when they had known each other through Coo and the magic locket, every moment of contact had been filled with words.

The silence went on a bit longer, but inevitably Attrebus broke it.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked.

“I hardly know,” she replied. “It’s all very strange, isn’t it? To be so afraid.”

“Afraid?” he said, sounding puzzled. “I—well, I’m hurt. I grieve for Sul. But I don’t think I’m afraid.”

“You are. You’re afraid of talking to me, as I am to you. Strange, isn’t it, after all that time we strove to keep each other’s company, to have a single word between us. And now …” She shrugged.

He stroked the mane of his horse. “Things happened to me,” he said. “Things I don’t want to talk about. I thought at first I was broken in a way that could never heal, that the best thing I could do was die. That’s how I felt when we finally met. I didn’t have anything to say to you because I didn’t have anything to say to anyone. And I know you had experiences that—”

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off.

“And now …” he began, but did not finish.

She felt a sort of heaviness in her heart.

“Now what?” she said.

“I’ve begun to see that one day I will feel human again. I may never be the same, but I will have something to offer—ah, to someone—if they could be patient with me.”

“Someone?”

He nodded. “You, of course,” he said softly. “I’ve never learned anyone the way I learned you. I’m not sure what I thought love was before. I’m not sure I can define what I think it is now. But I cannot imagine life without you. I want to know you better and better as the years go by. I just need—patience.”

She felt a little smile trying to lift the corners of her mouth, and perhaps it did, a very little.

“I’m not a patient girl by nature,” she said. “I tend to rush into
things or fall off of them. But if you can be patient with me, I can be patient with you.”

And so they fell silent again, and let the music of the forest entertain them.

Far away, another man and woman listened to a deeper, stranger music and watched the luminescent films they had named wisperills do their slow, colorful aerial dances, as if welcoming them. The trees hummed and murmured, not as before, but with the strength of the millions that spread out and away in the strange land, whose great boughs supported the island when it could no longer fly and helped settle it deep in boggy ground.

Fhena leaned back against Glim and exhaled deeply. “This is a nice place,” she said. “I like it.”

“So do I,” he said. “What I’ve seen of it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that I don’t know where we are. At first I imagined that we would be returned to Clavicus Vile’s realm, but although I’ve never been there, I don’t think this can be that place.”

“Of course not,” she said. “This is where the
trees
are from, not Umbriel.”

“But where is it?”

“Home,” she said softly.

“Well,” he said. “Now.”

“Always.”

He smiled, and surrendered for a moment to contentment—after all, it surrounded him. Everyone wasn’t content, of course. Down below, with the lords gone, the chefs and others who considered themselves elevated were doing their best to kill each other. But the skraws and fringe workers were free, and many of them had already left the city to find their livings in the lush world around them.

“What do you think that is?” he asked, pointing to a sort of spire near the horizon.

“I don’t know,” Fhena said. “A rock? An old building? What about it?”

“Tomorrow I think I’ll walk over and find out,” he said.

“Fine,” she replied. “But tomorrow.” And she nestled deeper in his arms, and they watched the wisperills dance.

Thanks to Tricia Pasternak, my editor, and Mike Braff, her assitant. Thanks also to Peter Weissman for copyediting and Nancy Delia for production editing, Joe Scalora for marketing, David Moench for publicity, and Scott Shannon for publishing. Thanks to Paul Youll for the cover art and Dreu Pennington-McNeil for the cover design. Once again, thanks to Pete Hines, Kurt Kuhlmann, Bruce Nesmith, and Todd Howard for their input, advice, and a great playground to run around in.

Born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1963, G
REG
K
EYES
spent his early years roaming the forests of his native state and the red rock cliffs of the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona. He earned his B.A. in anthropology from Mississippi State University and a master’s degree from the University of Georgia, where he did course work for a Ph.D. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, where, in addition to full-time writing, he practices ethnic cooking—particularly Central American, Szechuan, Malaysian, and Turkish cuisines—and Kapucha Toli, a Choctaw game involving heavy sticks and no rules. While researching the Age of Unreason series, he took up fencing, and now competes nationally. Greg is the author of
The Waterborn, The Blackgod
, the
Babylon 5
Psi Corps trilogy, the Age of Unreason tetrology (for which he won the prestigious Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire award), and three
New York Times
best-selling
Star Wars
novels in the New Jedi Order series.